The Cable Show was really the Comcast Show this year, as the operator blew everyone out of the park and affirmed itself as the leader in innovation in the industry. It influences CableLabs, it has its own R&D lab, it has its own content creators, it’s pushing residential gateways, TV Everywhere services, 4K, Wi-Fi. The only thing missing is an OTT service!
Comcast CEO and chairman Brian Roberts wooed and wowed audiences during his keynote speech at The Cable Show, which included a broadband speed test and a tour around its newest X2 platform. ‘Our future looks really bright,’ he said. ‘There’s a vibe at Comcast that I haven’t seen in many, many years.’
The vibe was infectious at the Cable Show, pouring out of the Comcast booth, which was consistently packed with on-lookers ogling the large 4K TV demo it had up and the slick interfaces pulled up on laptops and tablets.
Roberts’ session at the show was peppered with aphorisms ‘ Robertisms, if you will ‘ that display an incredibly intelligent man. Top Robertisms this year included:
‘If you don’t have your products on every platform, you’re missing an entire generation.’
‘4K is going to be a lot cheaper, both TV devices and cameras, than high def was when it first came out.’ Well, we’re not so sure about that one.
‘The more customers crave speed, the more the kids in the garage and the geniuses throughout the world can create applications that require speed ‘ that’s the best thing to happen to our industry.’
‘If you rely on the past to guide you, that’s a mistake.’
‘Television becomes more personalized to you. We as distributors and we as creators have to embrace that change.’
Comcast, and by extension Roberts, is in the unique position of being both content owner and content distributor, not to mention broadband provider, and so Roberts had a lot of say about the perceived obstacles the cable TV industry is facing today. His main message was something to the tune of ‘let’s not be afraid of technology.’
‘There are technological changes that are very troubling to the content providers,’ he said. ‘You can skip commercials altogether and have many, many more choices in how you get your content. If we work together, both sides will come out great.’
He reminded the audience that cord cutting hasn’t really materialized yet. ‘We have as many multi-channel video subscribers nationally as we did last year and the year before,’ he said. And he also reminded cablecos that improving service is a great way to gain new subscribers. ‘We’re making our products more valuable and easy to use on all these platforms,’ he said. ‘It’s all about getting on a tablet, getting it on a smart phone.’
And finally, as one expects, he reiterated that the TV screen is the primary viewing device. ‘When you can get it on your brand new HD TV, that’s where you want to have it most,’ he said. During an on-stage interview, Roberts wasn’t shy about asserting the fact that consumers’ demand for faster broadband was good for business. He flaunted 300 Mbps DOCSIS speeds by downloading a 4K video file from an email that was 4.2GB large. The file downloaded in a matter of about 10 seconds.
‘This is three hundred times faster than the first demo I did at The Cable Show, and yet this is basically the same cable network,’ he said. ‘I think we’re in a wonderful position to meet and exceed consumers demand.’
‘Is this industry flexible and able to take advantage of the consumer’s desire for more speed? The answer is, hell yes,’ Roberts said. ‘This may be one of the more exciting times to be in our industry.’
Comcast’s first cloud-based platform, the X1, generated a lot of buzz last year, and its newest iteration did not disappoint. ‘Being in the cloud allows us that interactivity that we’ve never seen before,’ Roberts said. ‘The cloud is a game changer.’
Roberts said that moving ‘the smarts’ of the set top into the cloud was an ‘a-ha’ moment for Comcast. ‘What’s interesting is how fast we can innovate and change that platform.’ That’s great news to hear for both subscribers and complimentary service technologies. In fact, earlier on that very same stage a panel of Internet companies had voiced grievances along this very line.
Roberts said Comcast had four goals for the new UI:
Make it faster (for consumers to get to content); Make it smarter (and let it learn preferences); Make it easy to use and Make it personalized.
‘We looked across the computer-cloud-Web ecosystem, the winners are companies that can integrate across all devices, across all platforms with the common interface, and can make it easy and fun to use,’ he said.
The physical cable box, called Xi3, is four times faster, three times smaller and has half the power consumption of the traditional cable box. The X2 operating system has a slew of new ‘next gen’ features, such as: Six ‘guides’ as Roberts referred to them, meaning six personalized tabs to sort content through, such as TV listings, movies, on-demand, just for kids, as well as personalized saved lists, and even recommended Web videos. It has voice control and navigation for accessibility, and voice search on the remote that can follow commands such as ‘Watch ‘Burn Notice” or ‘Find movies about basketball.’
‘We’re excited about openness, apps and customization.’ Something like a homepage with widgets for Facebook, weather, home automation management, Pandora, etc. It’s a seamless experience that can work on any device,’ Roberts said. ‘The whole look and feel is easy, personal, smart, fast, fun.’