CenturyLink (NYSE: CTL) isn't content to be just another me-too video service provider, so it's added a number of new features that enable users to interact with its IPTV service.
Among the new features, which are available through its application of Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) Mediaroom TV technology, are the ability to pause a program from any room and a button on the remote that lets users to flip through the last five channels that they were watching.
Users who already subscribe to whole home DVR service will also be able to pause live TV from any room in the house, rewind and fast-forward up to the live broadcast point and add the channel they're watching to their "Favorites" list with one touch.
Playing into the user interest in social networking applications, subscribers will be able access to social media sites such as Facebook.
The new features will be available to Prism IPTV users in La Crosse, Wis., Columbia and Jefferson City, Mo., Orlando, Tallahassee and southwest Fla., Las Vegas and central North Carolina.
While CenturyLink has taken a conservative deployment strategy with IPTV, it revealed that it would finally launch the service in at least one to two of the Qwest markets it entered into when it bought the telco last year. Currently available only in select parts of its overall markets, the telco has a total of 50,000 IPTV subscribers thus far.
For more:
- see the release
- here's FierceIPTV's take
Commentary: Telco TV delivery to grow to 71% IPTV by 2016 as hurdles fall
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