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Pac-12 Network: Watch Online With Bright House, Cox, Time Warner, NOT Comcast

This opening college football weekend, you can watch the Pac-12 Network online with Bright House, Cox, and Time Warner, but NOT Comcast.

You might notice that if you signed up with one of the four original cable providers that made a deal to air the Pac-12 Network, the online rollout has begun, with the iPad app also being debuted a few days ago in time for the first football games. Right now, those of you among the early providers should be enjoying all the online amenities the Pac-12 has to offer if you're subscribed to Bright House, Cox, and Time Warner.

Well, except one.

Online streaming of the multiple PAC12 Networks on XFINTY TV is scheduled to be available starting Wednesday, September 5th.

You're the best Comcast.

If you're not familiar with what Comcast is planning to do, the cable provider is trying to distribute the digital network through their website rather than through the Pac-12's. No, it's probably not because they believe they can do better than the Pac-12's sleek setup. The big issue is probably Comcast/XFINITY trying to promote all their other online on-demand products to try and ensure people spend more money and fill up the company's coffers. Not at all a greedy, corporate decision here.

Of course, two weeks after the launch of the network, one of the slowest-adopting companies still has yet to provide the service. Helpful Comcast Robot ComcastTed explains what exactly the situation is here.

Online access went from "hopefully by the start of football" to "targeting sometime in September" to now "September 5th." Are you finally done moving the goalposts? Sept. 5th is already nearly a month too late. I need to get my field hockey fix!

Apologies for the delays in the live streaming availability.

"Sometime in September" would certainly include September 5th. I thought it was important to provide that confirmed September 5th date to folks that are following this thread.

The PAC12 network only went live on August 15th so it is unlikely anyone could have provided live streaming of the network on August 5th (a month prior to September 5th and 10 days earlier than when the network was actually available but "nearly a month too late"), but I do get what you are saying, and again, sorry for the delays.

Glad to know that you can access the TV version of the network where you are.

You've got to love Comcast robot taking the month part seriously and not answering the overarching question of why Comcast is distributing the channel through their own website and why it took them this long when they've had over a year to prepare for this. Bright House, Cox, and Time Warner were all but ready at launch, and now Comcast's inability to have TV Anywhere ready for the first week will cost many customers the chance to watch Pac-12 football on the go.

So to add onto Comcast's inability to distribute the network nationally (which has just as much hindered the conference's ability to negotiate a fair deal with DirecTV as anythjng else), you have their bizarre desire to try and distribute the service through Xfinity.TV, a website that looks more at home in 2002 than 2012. The streams for select channels like the ESPN family of networks are depressing enough (just a straight video feed in most cases).

One has to hope that there will be some compromise where live content is shown on Xfinity's website and the replays/highlights will be available on the conference network site. I'm not a betting man the suits at Comcast and XFINITY are smart enough to figure that out.