Discovering XFINITY TV for Xbox 360
Despite entering its seventh year of existence and selling more than 70 million units to date, Microsoft keeps innovating with the Xbox 360 by constantly adding to its massively appealing feature-set. One of the latest such additions to this feature-set is the XFINITY TV app, which allows Comcast customers to enjoy thousands of On Demand programs right on their consoles, all without a cable box. In this article, I will look at the XFINITY TV app's requirements, available options, and how to maximize its usage with either the controller or Kinect.
Requirements
To use XFINITY TV for Xbox LIVE, you must have each of the following:
- Comcast XFINITY TV Digital Starter service or a better cable package
- At least one Comcast set top box or Cable Card connected to at least one TV anywhere in your home
- Comcast XFINITY Internet service
Typically, these services are bundled together in money-saving packages known as XFINITY Doubly Play (when included with Comcast's unlimited nationwide telephone service, XFINITY Triple Play).
In addition to the aforementioned Comcast subscription requirements, you need the following on your Xbox 360:
- Xbox LIVE Gold membership
- At least 100MB of available storage space
Finally, you need to know your XFINITY username and password in order to log in to the app. If you don't know or have forgotten your XFINITY username or password details, you can visit http://xfinity.comcast.net via Web browser or phone Comcast at (877) 599-1846.
As an interesting side note, since Comcast essentially considers an Xbox 360 running the XFINITY TV app as an additional cable box that's part of a subscriber's existing cable service, using it does not count against the monthly 250GB data usage threshold that other apps and Internet services do. While even with heavy usage most users never come close to using 250GB per month of data on their home Internet connection, it's still nice to know that there are no potential negatives to making extensive use of the XFINITY TV app.