Comcast plans to develop a global platform based around Smart TVs.
Speaking in a virtual conference organised by Goldman Sachs, Comcast CEO Brian Roberts said the company was studying how it might take its existing technology international.
“We’ve pivoted the company to focus on three things, broadband, aggregation and streaming and we want to be the best consumer proposition in all three of those”. Between Comcast’s X1 platform in the United States and Sky Q in Europe, Comcast reaches 35 million households.
Roberts explained how technology from X1 and Sky’s Now TV had helped with the launch of US streaming service Peacock. “We now have a global IP video platform that we’re building that we’re going to try to standardise the hardware across the world, they’ll have a common tech stack that utilises the aggregation platforms at Sky and NBC Universal.
“It’s early days, but we’re looking at smart TVs on a global basis, and we’re wondering can we bring our same tech stack to consumers who are relying more and more on smart TVs. We’ve done that with X1 and syndicated it to Canada and other operators in the United States and we see a similar opportunity to that.”
Roberts didn’t reveal which smart TV manufacturers he had been in conversation with.
However, Roberts was able to give details on the X1 voice remote had now been standardised across the globe, based on the Xfinity technology so by the end of the year this would be in 5 major geographies in 4 languages.
Streaming service Peacock is now the number 2 watched device in broadband only households, behind Netflix, and number 3 in X1 households, though Roberts said it was closing in on YouTube.
In total Peacock now has 15 million sign-ups.
