Castle Rock – When 14-month-old Marcus Miller takes his daily nap at 2 p.m., his mother, Renee, turns on the TV and works out to a yoga show produced in Denver. At 9 p.m., when all three of her children are in bed, Miller and her husband, Jeremy, navigate Comcast’s local video-on-demand listings and spend some quality time together watching “Core Power Yoga” in the living room of their Castle Rock home.
“Yeah, I’m a closet yoga guy,” Jeremy Miller says. “But I also like that you can learn to play the guitar by watching the on-demand programs, if I ever wanted to learn how to play the guitar.”
Comcast is banking on people such as the Millers, who spend about $100 a month for digital cable with HBO and high-speed Internet service, and take advantage of Comcast’s video-on-demand services on their 53-inch Hitachi high-definition TV.
The Millers used to subscribe to Dish Network satellite television, but a lower monthly fee lured them to Comcast about a year ago.
“For the price of cable, I have a different yoga workout everyday,” Renee Miller said. “It’s cheaper than a gym membership. So it’s worth it.”
Comcast, the nation’s largest cable TV provider with 21.4 million customers nationwide, is fending off competition by offering more options to customers, namely video-on-demand, or VOD, services.
Earlier this month, Comcast said 1 billion VOD programs have been viewed this year alone, nearly double the number viewed in 2004.
Among Comcast’s VOD offerings in Colorado are 150 hours of free, local programming. Local content ranges from documentaries to ethnic programs, high school sports and yoga.
The content is supplied by Comcast Entertainment Television, or CET. The CET network produces some of the shows, and others are done by local production companies. “Core Power Yoga,” for example, is produced with a local yoga studio.
Comcast also provides its own local content in other cities such as Boston and Philadelphia.
“We think having local content on demand as well as CET dedicated to the state of Colorado is a huge benefit,” said CET director Bob James.
VOD offerings are available to Comcast’s digital subscribers in Colorado. A digital set-top box allows users to pause, fast forward and rewind on-demand programming. About 95 percent of Comcast’s 4,000 VOD programs are free, but content such as new-release movies cost an average of $4 apiece.
Comcast has 700,000 Colorado subscribers but wouldn’t reveal how many of them have digital cable.
However, Leichtman Research Group Inc. reports that 40 percent of Comcast customers nationwide get digital cable, and the number is growing. Seventy-five percent of all digital subscribers in the U.S. have access to some form of on-demand programming, and 50 percent of those people are using the service, according to Leichtman Research.
Comcast said households with VOD use it more than 20 times a month.
“The goal is to lock up those customers and provide the glue that helps keep them with Comcast,” said Bruce Leichtman, president and principal analyst for Leichtman Research. “That’s more important than acquiring new customers.”
Local VOD is more of a “competitive weapon” because satellite TV providers can’t offer such specific content, Leichtman said.
VOD was part of the cable industry’s vision in the early 1990s when it began upgrading networks to support digital programming and high-speed Internet services.
“In the early 1990s, we were stuck with inferior products (compared with satellite TV),” Comcast co-founder and vice chairman Julian Brodsky said. “Digital was the way to go. Digital would enable us to become a new-products company.”
Today, cable has a distinct advantage over satellite when it comes to VOD offerings.
The Dish Network, operated by Douglas County-based EchoStar Communications Corp., offers customers with its newest digital video recorder access to 30 movies that that can viewed anytime.
The set-top box must be connected to a phone line so that customers can be billed for the movies they watch.
In 1999, EchoStar began offering local network stations and today offers local news and programming in 160 markets nationwide, after spending millions to buy and lease more satellite space.
But EchoStar spokesman Marc Lumpkin said the company doesn’t have the bandwidth to offer every high school football game in America because “it’s a national TV service.”
DirecTV, the nation’s largest satellite TV provider, with 14.6 million customers, does not offer on-demand programming, but has traditional pay-per-view offerings, where users navigate to a certain channel and pay to watch a movie at a particular time. The Dish Network also offers pay-per-view to its 11.4 million customers.
In addition to the Millers’ viewing of “Core Power Yoga,” their two older children, Adriana, 5, and Jake, 4, like to watch cartoons such as “Dora the Explorer” and “Kenny the Shark,” which are available on demand.
“Friday nights are our family-fun nights, so if we don’t buy a movie, we can easily find a family movie available under (VOD),” said Jeremy Miller.
They said they are considering getting a digital video recorder from Comcast.
They’re also awaiting telephone service from the company when it’s available, as they prefer to pay one bill for their phone, cable and Internet service.
Staff writer Kimberly S. Johnson can be reached at 303-820-1088 or kjohnson@denverpost.com.
