Aside from the content-selection limitations, the service itself works reasonably well. The video quality was definitely watchable, but looked heavily compressed and a bit grainy as it adapted to the varying throughput I was getting with my wired Comcast broadband connection. In the nonpremium shows and movies, 15- and 30-second commercials appear every 10 minutes or so. All in all, Fancast Xfinity TV is not as pleasing to watch as Hulu.

I also had some difficulty getting the premium content to play properly on my desktop PC; after I selected a title, such as the movie Rachel Getting Married or the HBO series Big Love, the stream would buffer for a long period, perhaps a minute, and then just stop with the viewing window still black. I discovered, however, that if I moved the navigation slider ahead slightly, the video would start.

The movies and TV shows on Fancast Xfinity TV are organized in alphabetical order on the site. However, the service doesn't have enough titles to conduct a subject-matter search; for instance, a search for "sharks" isn't likely to yield a rich result. Titles are also sortable by the content provider (HBO, NBC, and so on), but I doubt that many people would use this approach to find a video they're looking for. Typically, you end up skimming through the entire alphabetized list hunting for something interesting.

Maybe I expected too much too soon. Fancast Xfinity TV has been around for merely about three months, and Comcast stresses that it is working hard with its content partners to bring more video to the service.

But that could be a long, slow process. Fancast Xfinity TV can evolve only as rapidly as Hollywood sheds its aversion to embracing the new digital-distribution methods consumers want. But who better than Comcast--the largest U.S. cable provider and the biggest distributor of premium video content--with its deep network and studio relationships and immense buying power, to exert economic force on Hollywood to move video online more quickly?

Comcast's marketing hype around Fancast Xfinity TV suggested that the service would bring the Comcast cable TV experience to the smaller screens of desktop, laptop, and mobile devices. But the service hasn't done that--not yet.