HBO Go will first become available to Verizon FiOS subscribers that pay for HBO cable channels as part of their TV package. Customers must also be FiOS broadband subscribers to log in to the service, but once they have, HBO Go and FiOS will allow up to three simultaneous household users watching content at the same time.

The HBO Go service will have about 600 hours of programming online, 25 percent of which will be refreshed weekly, with new episodes of its TV shows added immediately after they air, according to Multichannel News. That said, initial reports on the quality of the programming available are fairly negative. TechCrunch’s Eric Schonfeld, for instance, bemoans the lack of interesting content that might draw him to the site: “[F]or the most part the selection is worse than what you get on Netflix via its streaming option. I’m not sure I want to see The Chumscrubber in HD.” While I have yet to check out the HBO Go implementation myself, based on what I’ve seen available from HBO on Comcast’s TV Everywhere portal, I’d have to agree that the content mix (other than having the entire run of The Wire available) is not that compelling.

The same content that’s being rolled out to FiOS customers is also available through Comcast’s Fancast Xfinity TV, the cable provider’s own premium content portal for subscribers. The Fancast offering was launched in December to allow Comcast subscribers to access on-demand video content from 30 different cable programmers.

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TV Everywhere is an industry-wide initiative through which programmers and cable companies are collaborating to give customers access to on-demand video content from cable networks that they’ve paid to subscribe to. But to do so, they need to connect with each other to ensure a user that’s trying to access certain content has paid for it.

To enable programmers to make that video content available to those that subscribe to their channels, Brightcove has struck a partnership with SaaS identity management firm Ping Identity to add SAML 2.0-based authentication and authorization compliance tools. Since each cable provider will have a different authentication scheme to log in and view content subscribers pay for, support for standards-based authentication will let programmers roll out services more quickly.

Brightcove’s TVE-SP provides rights and entitlement management tools so that programmers can control who gets to see what content, and when. The new tools will allow media companies to control scheduling and release windows, geographic restrictions, and custom metadata. TVE-SP also provides advanced ad insertion and audience measurement tools to provide better monetization capabilities for its programming customers.

In addition to rolling out its new TV Everywhere tools, Brightcove announced that it has promoted Eric Elia to vice president of TV solutions. In his new role, Elia will be focused on managing the team focused on selling TVE-SP services to major programmers. Elia has experience working with those customers, as he led the team that put together what is now Comcast’s Fancast video service.

Many major media companies use do-it-yourself solutions that they built in-house to manage the distribution of their video assets online. But Brightcove vice president of marketing Jeff Whatcott says many are rethinking that strategy, as the expertise and technology required to roll out TV Everywhere-type services becomes more expensive.

“TV Everywhere is placing a lot of stress on these DIY systems. It requires a lot of cost to introduce these services, but they’re not introducing a lot of revenue,” Whatcott said in a phone interview. As a result, he says “a lot of media companies are asking themselves, ‘Should we be doing this ourselves or should we be using a platform like Brightcove?’”

With the new offering, Brightcove will be able to compete for TV Everywhere business against companies like thePlatform and ExtendMedia, which have led the roll out of most of those services to this point. Comcast subsidiary thePlatform is already being used to manage its parent company’s TV Everywhere rollout, dubbed Fancast Xfinity TV. And ExtendMedia thePlatform also powers the On Demand Online offering of Rogers Communications, which launched its TV Everywhere service in November, while ExtendMedia is behind Bell’s TV Everywhere deployment.

To learn all you need to know about TV Everywhere, check out our Ultimate Guide to TV Everywhere, now available on GigaOM Pro (subscription required).

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Fancast Xfinity TV

After weeks of speculation over when Comcast would officially launch its TV Everywhere implementation, the cable provider finally took the wraps off the service. Starting today, Fancast Xfinity TV will be available to Comcast customers who subscribe to its pay TV and broadband Internet services.

The Fancast Xfinity TV service will have full-length programming from nearly 30 content providers, including major cable channels like HBO, Starz and Cinemax. Altogether, the new service launched with 12,000 video assets, compared with about 17,000 that are available through Comcast’s VOD service.

To access the service, users will have to subscribe to both Comcast’s cable television and broadband Internet service, somewhat limiting the number of subscribers who can access Xfinity. The cable company wouldn’t say how many of its consumers use both services, but the number is less than the company’s official count of 15.7 million broadband subscribers. In time, Comcast plans to extend the service to all 24 million of its cable TV customers.

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Users will need to download and install a client that enables them to authenticate with Comcast from their PCs. The service uses Move Networks’ adaptive bit-rate technology to adapt to changing network conditions and deliver the best quality stream based on available bandwidth.

Not all content will be available to all users. For instance, subscribers who don’t pay for HBO as part of their cable package won’t be able to watch The Sopranos on the service. Instead, users will be met with a prompt asking if they’d like to subscribe to watch a particular piece of content.

Matt Strauss, Comcast’s senior vice president of New Media, said that the particular show that would be available to users would depend on the windowing plans of individual content providers. While some cable networks are making their content available the day after a show airs, others are only submitting older library content to the service for now. Programmers are also divided on how they approach advertising on the site. While some are experimenting with inserting a full ad load into the content, others are being more cautious with the amount of ads being served.

While increasing the amount of content that viewers can access online, the service is also designed to provide a 360-degree connection to a Comcast subscriber’s TV viewing, providing the available TV and video-on-demand listings in the customer’s browser. Later versions of the service will enable viewers to control their DVR, and create TV and VOD watch lists.

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