Time Warner Upgrades Its iPad App: You Can Watch News, But No Stephen Colbert

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If you’re an owner of an iPad and you have a Time Warner Cable subscription, the good news about the cable company app’s recent upgrade is that it has more functionality. The bad news is that you’ll still have to tune into your daily fix of Stephen Colbert or Jon Stewart via your regular television set.

Time Warner Cable announced Thursday that it had released the second version of its iPad app, and that its previous version had been downloaded more than 600,000 times.

Its subscribers had rushed to download the app when Time Warner launched it on March 15, making it one of the most popular apps on Apple’s iTunes store at the time. Users were so eager to access their television programming through their iPads that Time Warner’s system serving the programming to the iPads crashed, reducing the channel line-up to 15 channels at the time.

Now its subscribers have access to more than 100 channels. News junkies have access to CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, Current TV — and yes — CSPAN, CSPAN2 and CSPAN3.

But no Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert.

That’s because Viacom owns Comedy Central, and it’s duking out the terms on which Time Warner Cable can distribute its programming.

The two sides reached a legal cease fire last month after Viacom initially sued Time Warner in April for violating the terms of its distribution agreement by offering programming on the iPad. But they still haven’t arrived at an agreement.

For now, with the upgraded functionality you can use your iPad to record their shows with your DVR.

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