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WASHINGTON – New cyberspace recording services from companies much as Netflix and Apple are offering a looking of a home recreation forthcoming that doesn't allow a pricey monthly telegram bill.

To challenge the telegram TV industry's ascendency in the living room, though, online recording services responsibility favourite movies and TV shows to lure viewers, and admittance to high-speed cyberspace networks to accomplish them.

Yet they hit had no rights to either — until now.

To get polity approval to take over NBC Universal last month, telegram giant Comcast Corp. agreed to permit online rivals authorise NBC programming, including hit shows much as "30 Rock" and "The Office." Comcast also agreed not to country its 17 meg band subscribers from watching recording online through Netflix, Apple's iTunes and additional rivals ease to come.

Those requirements aim to ensure that the nation's maximal telegram TV company, with nearly 23 meg recording subscribers in 39 states, cannot choke the ontogeny of the nascent cyberspace recording business. Although they apply only to Comcast and NBC, these conditions could serve as a help for additional bounteous recreation companies in handling with newborn online competitors. They also beam a powerful communication that the polity believes these promising young rivals merit an possibleness to take on ingrained media companies.

"These conditions are not just window dressing," said Paul Gallant, an shrink for MF Global, a financial brokerage. "They come crossways as a pretty comprehensive try to provide cyberspace TV a real shot at attractive off."

The agent Communications Commission and the Justice Department spent more than a assemblage reviewing Comcast's organisation to acquire a 51 proportionality wager in NBC Universal from General Electric. The care gives Comcast curb over the NBC and Telemundo broadcast networks, telegram channels much as CNBC and Bravo, the Universal Pictures movie flat and a wager in Hulu.com, which distributes NBC and additional broadcast planning online.

Government officials wanted to ensure that Comcast could not modify rivalry through its curb over both a field media corp and the pipes that hit telegram and cyberspace services to jillions of dweller homes.

But figuring discover how to protect online recording was hornlike because the mart is ease attractive shape.

Netflix offers subscription plans with unlimited online check for $8 a month. Apple and Amazon.com permit customers lease or acquire individual movies and TV shows for as little as a few dollars apiece — providing an deciding for grouping who don't want bounteous bundles of telegram channels they haw never watch. Apple and Google attain set-top boxes and code that designate online recording to television sets, freeing it from computer screens. TV makers are also antiquity in cyberspace capabilities.

All these options could attain it easier to revilement the telegram cloth — and the telegram bill. In 2010, Comcast's telegram customers paying an average of $70 per period for recording services.

But with curb of NBC Universal, Comcast could handicap Web rivals by overcharging for — or only withholding — every sorts of canopy content. A "Top Chef" fan, for instance, strength not modify telegram if the show weren't acquirable online. Comcast could also country or andante online recording reciprocation on its large band network. ITunes can't contend with telegram if programs stutter online.

None of the bounteous online recording companies would comment about Comcast. And Comcast itself insists it does not see online recording as a danger — but kinda a artefact to modify its possess reach.

Still, in approbatory the deal, federal officials bespoken mountain of conditions, including individual bounteous ones to protect cyberspace video:

• Comcast staleness delude its content to online recording services. That gives them admittance to canopy NBC Universal programming.

• Comcast can't interfere with cyberspace recording reciprocation liquid over its band network. That effectuation that it cannot preclude its subscribers from accessing Netflix and additional Web recording services, or andante downbound reciprocation from these services to attain them jerky, unsafe and hornlike to watch.

• Comcast staleness delude stand-alone cyberspace admittance at a reasonable price, without tying it to a telegram TV package, to enable cord-cutting. That includes offering a standard 6-megabit-per-second plan, which is fast sufficiency to appendage cyberspace video, for roughly $50 a month.

Although these requirements substance no guarantees of success for newborn online recording services, they aim to ensure that Comcast cannot keep the online businesses. They also fortuity newborn connector by giving cyberspace rivals whatever of the aforementioned protections that hit daylong been acquirable to equipment companies and additional subscription TV competitors.

Existing FCC rules require telegram TV companies to authorise the channels they possess to much rivals. Now, newborn cyberspace recording services crapper authorise bounteous packages of NBC Universal planning for the aforementioned toll that a tralatitious rival pays. Or they crapper acquire limited shows or channels if they are already licensing same planning from additional field media company. For example, if Netflix strikes a care to authorise children's planning from The Walt Disney Co., Comcast staleness attain same children's planning from NBC acquirable to Netflix under kindred terms.

Only Comcast and NBC are extremity by these conditions, ease they could push additional media companies to attain their planning acquirable to online services, too. They could also serve as a plan for forthcoming polity integration reviews and modify shape newborn FCC rules moving the whole industry.

"Before this deal, online recording distributors had no rights to planning at all," Stifel Nicolaus shrink wife Arbogast said. "This opens the door."

That said, the rules attain no promises. cyberspace companies haw not be healthy to afford the full NBC Universal planning collection as equipment TV and additional rivals today do, said Thomas Eagan, an shrink with author Stewart. Even Netflix, with more than 20 meg subscribers, would hit pain paying a tab that Eagan estimates at $1.5 billion a year.

This approach also shackles these newborn companies to tralatitious playing models and inhibits innovation, additional prince Leigh, an shrink with investigate concern Inside Digital Media.

What's more, a lot is unstoppered to interpretation with the responsibility that Comcast follow the advance of additional bounteous media companies that authorise same planning — say, comedies or actuality shows — to online services. For instance, should Bravo hit to authorise "The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills" to an online provider just because MTV is providing "Jersey Shore"?

And what is to stop every the bounteous media companies from only operating in lockstep and withholding every planning from online distributors, which would preclude that choice from existence triggered?

David Cohen, Comcast chief vice president, has said the consort could ingest various arguments to limit the types of planning it staleness supply. Disputes could wind up in arbitration.

Meanwhile Corie Wright, policy direction for the open welfare assemble Free Press, said she is disappointed that the polity conditions do not endeavor to fortuity up a newborn online service existence pioneered by Comcast and additional subscription-television providers. This service, which Comcast calls Xfinity, puts favourite telegram shows on the Internet, but restricts admittance to subscribers.

"The polity haw hit effectively favored a playing help that forces consumers to clear for a telegram subscription to check recording online," she said.

At this early juncture, it's impossible to prognosticate just how the mart module evolve. Will Netflix and Apple squeeze the telegram business discover of the living room? Will telegram companies successfully fend soured newborn online challengers? Or module there be shack for both?

Consumers module finally decide. But at small audience module hit a choice.

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AP Technology Writer Ryan Nakashima in Los Angeles contributed to this report.

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