Comcast Chair & CEO Brian Roberts today said plans for the X1 connected TV platform around the Rio Games represent an “unprecedented” merging of linear TV and live digital streams. Roberts, speaking at a press conference at the company’s Philadelphia HQ, said more than 6,750 hours of live coverage of Olympic programming will be delivered through the cloud-based X1 service, supported by developing features such as voice-based commands; seamless switching between TV and digital feeds of NBC Sports coverage; searching by individual athletes, countries or specific sports; and tagging of viewer favorites.
“We’ve never integrated live streams and TV in quite this way before,” he said. “Nobody has. … The breakthrough is in the search and discovery.” More than 40% of Comcast subscribers now have X1 capability, up from roughly 2% during the '14 Sochi Games. Roberts added the X1 service “will get smarter as we go” once artificial intelligence adapts to incoming Olympic-related searches. “It’s an ever-changing, ever-learning, ever-improving experience.”
He went on to call X1 deployment for Rio, involving a deep collaboration between Philadelphia-based Comcast staffers and NBC Sports operations in Rio and Stamford, Conn., a realization of the company’s Project Infinity initiative he first outlined at the '08 Int'l Consumer Electronics Show in which any content would theoretically be available at any time on any device.
