Comcast wrapped 2013 by making its X1 platform available to the bulk of its customer base, but it appears to be starting off the new year by filling in some deployment gaps.
Comcast announced Monday that it had unleashed X1 in the Keystone Region, an area that covers systems in western, central and northeast Pennsylvania, eastern Ohio and portions of West Virginia and Maryland.
In addition to a cloud-based video navigator, X1 features also include integrated sports and weather widgets and access to third-party apps from Pandora and Facebook. Comcast has also developed the X1 Remote App, an application for iOS and Android devices that lets customers navigate and search for content using gestures and voice commands.
"The X1 Platform is a huge leap forward for us and transforms traditional television viewing into an entirely new entertainment experience," said Jim Samaha, senior vice president of Comcast's Keystone Region, in a statement "X1 uses cloud-based technology to make the TV smarter, richer and more personalized, and allows us to deliver new features to our customers faster than ever."
Comcast began to rollout X2, the next-generation of X1, in select markets late last year.
At a Citigroup conference earlier this month in Las Vegas, Comcast chairman and CEO estimated that “tens of thousands” of customers currently have access to the refreshed platform, which features an upgraded, more personalized and unified UI that run on set-tops, PC browsers, tablets and smartphones. X2 also sets the table for a cloud DVR and in-home streaming to mobile devices of the MSO’s full linear TV lineup.
Roberts also told the conference that Comcast “moderately” grew video subscribers in the fourth quarter of 2013, attributing the gain in part to the MSO's authenticated TV Everywhere apps and the X1 platform.
Roberts also said that X1, which has primarily been targeted to new triple-play customers, has about 1 million users, and that Comcast is looking to accelerate the rollout of X1/X2 to more than half its footprint in the next few years.
