Charter Communications dropped a few technology tidbits into its Q3 call Thursday, touching on activities and plans involving video, broadband and wireless/mobile.

Charter, company president and CEO Tom Rutledge said, had deployed more than 1 million WorldBox devices across its national footprint by the end of Q3. Those hybrid IP/QAM devices use the company’s new cloud-based guide and a downloadable security platform that allows the company to deploy it in all systems – Charter legacy systems as well as the former Time Warner Cable and Bright House Network footprints.

Charter originally tapped vendors such as Cisco Systems (before it sold its CPE business to Technicolor) and Humax to make the WorldBox, but since tapped Arris to aid a WorldBox 2.0 project that aims to be more cost-efficient than its predecessor.

RELATED: Arris ‘Racing to the Finish Line’ on WorldBox 2.0

“Going forward, WorldBox will be the only set-top box we buy and will be the workhorse for our all-digital project,” Rutledge said, adding that Charter plans to deploy its new Spectrum Guide to new customers in former TWC and Bright House markets next year.

While Charter hopes the WorldBox will help to add attractiveness to its pay TV offering, Rutledge noted that one pressure on the video bundle (in addition to the big one, price) comes in part from password sharing and multi-stream OTT products that can exacerbate that issue.

On the broadband front, Rutledge said Charter will introduce gigabit speeds using DOCSIS 3.1 “in several key markets” over the next couple of months.

Charter plans to eventually buy D3.1 modems exclusively, as the products are expected to cost about the same as D3.0 devices (D3.1 modems are hybrids that support spectrum used for D3.0 and D3.1 services).

Currently Charter offers internet speeds of 100 Mbps in more than 75% of its footprint, up from 50% at the end of Q2, and expects to offer a minimum of 100 Mbps across nearly all its passings by year-end, Rutledge said.

Charter is also on track to launch a wireless service in 2018 using the MVNO agreement with Verizon that it inherited from the TWC deal. Rutledge offered more color, as Charter expects to make that operational by the second quarter of next year and that field trials are underway with Charter employees.

Rutledge also talked up Charter’s cooperative relationship with Comcast with respect to mobile and wireless, which includes WiFi network management and the MVNO deal that both companies have with Verizon.

RELATED: Comcast, Charter to Partner on Wireless

“We have an opportunity together to run the business more effectively from a back-office perspective,” he said, adding later that the use of WiFi in and out of the home will help Charter keep its MVNO-related costs in check.

Shaw Communications CEO Brad Shaw said the MSO is “on track and on budget” with a plan to deploy Comcast’s X1 platform across the Canadian MSO’s footprint throughout fiscal 2017.

Shaw, whose fiscal 2016 year ended August 31, is syndicating Comcast’s X1 platform, with its first implementation being a TV Everywhere app called FreeRange TV that was introduced in January.

The next step is to bring an X1-powered experience to the set-top box.

RELATED: Cox Inks National X1 Deal with Comcast 

Shaw is currently trialing X1 in some select homes, and expects to have it launched “in at least one market in calendar 2016,” Shaw said.

“It's certainly on time and on budget and we couldn't be more delighted in our progress,” he said Wednesday on the company's fiscal Q4 call. 

As for X1-related costs (for the app and home rollouts), Shaw pegged it at about $75 million ($25 million in opex and $50 million in capex), and $75 million again in FY 2017, with the opex and capex numbers reversed.

The X1 rollout is one of three initiatives tied to $1.3 billion in capital spending Shaw is releasing for its 2017 fiscal year.

That includes Shaw’s rollout of DOCSIS 3.1, which will enable gigabit-class high-speed Internet services, and an LTE buildout to Shaw’s major and medium-sized communities.

“DOCSIS 3.1 will be available to the vast majority of customer homes by the end of F17,” Shaw said, noting that this network readiness plan includes elements such as node splits and a  move to a “fiber deep” architecture, and conversions to CCAP (converged cable access platform).

“2016 was a transformative year and represents a very deliberate pivot in the strategic direction for Shaw towards long-term sustainable growth,” the exec said in sizing up the going-forward plan.

Shaw also addressed the demise of Shomi, the multiscreen SVOD service joint venture with Rogers Communications that will wind-down operations on November 30.

RELATED: Shomi to Shut Down on Nov. 30

In fiscal 2015 and 2016 Shaw recognized total equity losses of $108 million tied to Shomi, and an additional $51 million impairment in Q3 of FY 2016. Shaw said the operator expects to incur additional costs in relation to the wind-down of up to $120 million. 

Shaw lost 22,171 residential cable video subs in Q3, ending the period with 1.67 million. Shaw lost 93,464 cable video subs for all of fiscal 2016, narrowed slightly from a loss of 102,781 subs in the prior fiscal year.

Shaw also shed 6,332 satellite TV subs in fiscal Q4, giving it 790,574.

The operator also added 10,341 high-speed Internet subs, expanding to 1.79 million, but lost 18,942 phone customers.

Shaw, which closed its acquisition of Wind Mobile in March, added almost 40,000 wireless subs, expanding that total to 1.04 million.

Revenue for the quarter rose 15.5%, to $1.31 billion, while net income dipped 44.2%, to $154 million.

Liberty Global execs said the MSO is pushing ahead with EOS, a next-gen, cloud-powered box equipped with 4K capabilities that will bring more unity to its video platform.

EOS is “going to be the workhorse for our video platform. It’s powerful, inexpensive with great scale benefit,” Mike Fries, Liberty Global’s CEO, said last week on the company’s Q2 earnings call.

Fries said he expects EOS devices to cost “much less” than the MSO’s current Horizon boxes.

Liberty Global hasn’t pinpointed where EOS will show up first, but the box “will be rolled out all across Europe, and will benefit South America as well,” Balan Nair, Liberty Global’s CTO, added.

And, Nair added, it will be flexible enough to swap in apps and interfaces. “We’ll have a very easy way to move UIs on, so you could have TiVo one day on and you can have the Horizon UI in the same box, the next day. So, it’s a very fungible low cost high powered box.”

And the EOS rollout will have some impact on Liberty Global’s Virgin Media unit in the U.K., which has been leaning on a TiVo-powered platform.

The plan there is to “re-launch under the brand Virgin TV” with the new EOS box along with a new interface that will provide a “very significant step up in our ability to [offer] on-demand programming across multiple forms and give our customers access to a wide range of over the top applications,” Virgin Media CEO Tom Mockridge said.

Virgin Media will be shifting to the new box platform as it continues to face off with Sky and its launch of Sky Q, a new next-gen whole-home, multiscreen video platform.

Liberty Global announced plans for EOS in May, noting that it intends to start trials later this year.

Liberty Global ended Q2 with 53.9 million revenue generating units (22.5 million video, 17.1 million broadband, and 14.3 million telephony RGUs), up by 231,000, across its footprint of 49.8 million homes passed in Europe. However, Liberty Global shed 72,000 video subs in Q2, improving on the 111,000 video losses from the year-ago quarter. 

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Float Left, a TV app development division of Olympusat, has unleashed Flicast, an interface/user experience platform targeted to content publishers that are looking to launch direct-to-consumer video streaming services.

Float Left said Flicast pairs a customizable and unified UX with a cloud-based content discovery platform, noting that it’s compatible with TV Everywhere, subscription and ad-supported VOD services, and TV on demand service models, and enables discovery through a mix of recommendations, watchlists, and video browsing history.

Flicast, the company added, supports several streaming platforms, including Roku, Apple TV, iOS and Android mobile devices, Amazon Fire TV, Android TV, Xbox consoles, Opera TV, and LG and Samsung smart TVs.

At the show, Float Left will demo Flicast at the Olympusat booth (#360).

“With the number of streaming video services growing every day, consumers are overwhelmed with choice,” Float Left CEO Tom Schaeffer said, in a statement .“Content publishers have been struggling to figure out how to keep viewers engaged, drive loyalty, and remain competitive. We developed Flicast to not only help brands reach their audience across the connected ecosystem, but also to engage and retain their viewers through innovative personalized experiences.”

Float Left said it has launched over 250 TV Everywhere and OTT apps across more than 30 devices, and counts clients such as AMC Networks, Fox, CBS Sports, Red Bull, and Viacom.

Comcast has followed last year’s launch of the “Kids Zone” guide for X1 with the debut of a  Spanish-language version that also features age-appropriate TV shows and movies rated and monitored by Common Sense Media.

“Today we’re making Kids Zone a truly bicultural experience: now available in Spanish, Kids Zone meets the needs of today’s Hispanic families and gives children a fun place to browse and watch, in the language of their choice,” Javier Garcia, SVP and GM of multicultural services at Comcast, said in a blog post. “This also will be the first experience that provides parents access to Common Sense Media's age-based ratings and reviews in Spanish – directly on the TV - for some of the most-popular Latino kids TV programs including El Chavo Animado, Tayo, Nina’s World and Plaza Sésamo.”

He said the plan is to work with Common Sense Media to grow the catalog of in-language rated content over time. Kids Zone features family-friendly fare across live, VOD and DVR-recorded programs.

When it announced Q1 results late last month, Comcast estimated that nearly 35% of its 22.4 million video subs are now on X1, and that it added 1.1 million X1 subs to the mix in Q1, a 53% increase on net adds versus the year-ago quarter.

Charter Communications has expanded the rollout of Spectrum Guide, its cloud-based user interface that relies on ActiveVideo technology to deliver it to older QAM-locked set-tops as well as its newer IP-capable devices.

Charter said it has introduced Spectrum Guide to video subs in Fort Worth, Texas; Reno, Nev.; and St. Louis, Mo., and that it will soon start to launch its new World Box, a platform that will support the new UI, an array of apps, and feature a downloadable security platform. Technicolor, which acquired Cisco Systems’ CPE business in November 2015, and Humax are the known suppliers of the World Box.

Speaking Thursday on Charter’s Q1 call, company CEO Tom Rutledge said the MSO expects to have the UI rolled out to most legacy Charter markets by the end of 2016.

“It continues to scale well, and is resonating with consumers,” he said.

He said managing the all-digital transition of the acquired systems will be a “key priority,” hopeful that Charter can complete the process across all 36 million homes passed by TWC and Bright House by the end of 2018. Charter is still working on the rollout plan of Spectrum Guide in the acquired systems, Rutledge said.

Early into the all-digital process after the deals close, Charter will “briefly pause” new digital rollouts in the legacy and newly acquired systems, and then restart the effort by deploying two-way set-tops everywhere, and discontinuing the deployment of one-way Digital Transport Adapters (DTAs), Rutledge said.

TWC has been using DTAs, which don’t inherently support two-way services like VOD, to help fuel its all-digital initiative. Charter will remove DTAs from the market “in a natural way” as new customers sign up for service and existing ones upgrade, Rutledge said. “We’re not going to force them out.”

On the call, Charter was also asked to discuss the advantage of the ActiveVideo joint venture with Arris (the J.V. acquired ActiveVideo in mid-2015, with Arris nabbing a 65% stake).

Charter EVP and CFO Chris Winfrey called it a “productive relationship,” noting that Charter is treated as an “independent third-party vendor inside the relationship with ActiveVideo” with the ability to see inside the product pipeline and have some oversight on product development.

“That ActiveVideo technology platform allows us to use existing set-top boxes and put a state-of-the-art user interface on those already deployed boxes and not have to replace those boxes, so that they essentially become state-of-the-art boxes,” Rutledge added. “That’s the capital advantage of having that vendor relationship.”

During the call, Rutledge also discussed some other operational efforts that are bearing fruit. In Q1, Charter saw a 15% year-on-year reduction in billing and service calls, and a 19% reduction in service truck roll volume. About 80% of service truck rolls at Charter are now insourced, up from 50% in 2012, he said, adding that call center activity is now 90% insourced.

In April, Charter added an electronic disconnect capability in lieu of physical truck rolls. That is also helping Charter to scale its self-install practices, Rutledge said. 

Comcast has rolled out another wave of additions and enhancements to its X1 platform, including a new feature that aims to simplify the process for customers to verify and activate their accounts at the set-top box level.

On that front, Comcast has begun to roll out a new screen for X1 that lets customers verify by entering the last digits of the account’s primary phone number.

“This simplified verification saves customers and technicians time and alleviates the frustration of having to enter a long account number,” Peter Nush, the company’s VP of product management, explained in this blog post.

Among the other additions, Comcast has also added a search feature that only pulls up shows that are available on-demand from networks that don’t necessarily appear on a linear, live channel. Examples of that include Angry Birds Toons and Kabillion.

Comcast has also extended its “Auto Extend” feature to more live events, now spanning the NFL, MLB, NHL, NBA, MLS NASCAR and NCAA men’s football and basketball. Auto Extend is has become the default “stop” setting for recording options on X1.

Additionally, the Comcast Labs section of X1 is now testing a “Default Guide View” component that enables subs to control and personalize the kind of content they see when pressing the Guide button of the remote. Using this test feature, customers can now use that button to select a particular guide view – such as HD Channels, Favorites, the X1 Trending guide, or the Kids guide view. Those various guide options can still be pulled up by pressing the Guide button twice.

At last check, Comcast has been deploying about 40,000 X1 boxes a day, with about 35% of its video base on the platform. The MSO expects to push that to 50% by year end.

Cox, one of the MSOs licensing the platform, confirmed this week that it has rolled out its new X1-based Contour offering to all systems except for Virginia, which will come online later this month.

Comcast’s strategy to license X1 to other operators won’t necessarily move the financial needle at the company in a big way, but it will help Comcast expand its cloud-based platform outside its traditional footprint.

“I wouldn’t point to licensing X1 as something people should be baking into their expectations as a big financial mover for us,” Mike Cavanagh, Comcast’s recently named EVP and CFO, said Monday at the UBS Global Media and Communications Conference.  “But, nonetheless, the ubiquity of our platform outside our footprint, we think, is a good thing.”

Comcast’s X1 licensing efforts ramped up again after the MSO dropped its pursuit to merge with Time Warner Cable, a move that obviously would’ve broadened the reach and driven more scale into that platform.

Since then, Comcast’s X1 licensing strategy has found some early success with Cox Communications, which has a national deal in place, and with Canada’s Shaw Communications, which is testing Comcast’s platform ahead of an expected commercial launch.

Cavanagh reiterated that Comcast ended Q3 with a 25% penetration with X1, noting that it recently ramped up deployment to 40,000 X1 boxes per day. He also did not disagree with UBS analyst’s John Hodulik estimate that Comcast will have 30% of its video subs on X1 by the end of the year. Comcast ended Q3 with about 22.58 million video subs.

Cavanagh noted that X1 will play a big role in the MSO’s goal to drive growth of video subs on an annualized basis.

“We have been showing progress quarter by quarter by quarter,” he said. “This quarter (Q4)… I think will be a solid one on subscriber metrics leading us into next year.”

Comcast is also trying to improve video metrics with slimmed down bundled, including Internet Plus and its newer offering, Stream TV, an IPTV offering targeted to broadband-only homes that features the major broadcast channels, HBO, a VOD library and access to a cloud DVR for $15 per month.

Comcast has launched Stream TV in Boston and Chicago, with an expansion to the rest of the MSO’s footprint expected early next year.

With respect to Stream TV, it’s “too early to have any real learnings,” Cavanagh said, noting that the idea to experiment with new products and expose them to a different market  segment, with the hope to “up-sell and migrate as time passes.”

Industry analyst Craig Moffett remains a big fan of Charter Communications’s cloud-based video strategy, agreeing with the MSO’s notion that the plan, which relies heavily on ActiveVideo’s platform, will enable the operator to significantly reduce capital spending, particularly at the set-top level.

Moffett, principal and senior analyst at MoffettNathanson, placed an emphasized on that approach in a report on Charter’s capex prospects as the operator pushes ahead with its proposed acquisitions of Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks.

Moffett said “the most interesting number” in Charter’s pro forma projections for those deals is 11.8% -- the MSO’s “aggressive” pro forma capital intensity forecast for 2019E.

“Charter sees the number not as a short term blip but instead as an indication of a fundamentally different long-term capital intensity profile for the business,” he wrote.

Moffett, which has raised his price target on Charter to $230 to $210, believes that projection for lower capex intensity is “plausible” for Charter, “at least for the residential segment of their business.” For its part, MoffettNathanson’s own analysis of Charter envisions a 12.2% capital intensity, slightly above Charter’s forecast.

A big part of that decrease in capex intensity centers on Charter’s plan to move toward a cloud-based approach with ActiveVideo’s technology (an Arris-Charter joint venture acquired ActiveVideo in May for $135 million) that will allow the MSO to offer its new Spectrum UI and new apps across its footprint to both new IP-capable, such as its emerging Worldbox, as well as to legacy QAM-based boxes that don’t speak IP.

“[W]e believe Charter’s aggressive software and cloud-based approach will lead to a dramatic reduction in…CPE spending,” Moffett noted. “The potential capex savings from the transition from a hardware-based platform to a software-based one appears to be genuine, and make us incrementally more bullish on Cable, particularly on Charter.”

By comparison, he said Comcast, which has conducted some trials with ActiveVideo but has not committed to anything beyond that, will also enjoy a reduction in CPE capex as it expands the reach of the X1 platform, but that Comcast’s approach, which centers on the deployment of IP-capable devices, “will remain more capital intensive than Charter’s.”

Moffett also outlined the four “key” components of a cloud-based guide build: the server costs, seen as the most expensive element, as well as engineering/installation costs, network upgrade costs and app development costs.

With that as the basis, he estimates $2 billion in five-year total capex for a cloud-based guide build compared to $8.4 billion – a 77% reduction in capex -- for IP-enabled boxes for a company the size of pro format Charter.

Speaking on Charter’s Q3 call in October, president and CEO Tom Rutledge noted that Charter was about six weeks behind its original rollout schedule as the MSO irons out software issues.

While that pushes Charter’s prior target of launching its new cloud-powered UI to 1.6 million boxes by the end of the year, “a delay of only six weeks for a footprint-wide rollout should be viewed as very good news,” Moffett said, adding that Charter could have a fully interactive UI in front of all its customer within a couple of years.

Looking ahead, Moffett believes that cable will gain video share thanks to improved platforms and experiences. As for pro forma Charter, he sees it adding about 130,000 net video subs in 2019E. 

Comcast recently added support for Spanish to a “talking guide” that was introduced last year to the MSO’s cloud-powered X1 platform for the blind and visually disabled. 

“We’re now expanding the feature to better serve our Spanish-speaking customers, with the launch of the Spanish Talking Guide,” Javier Garcia, Comcast’s VP and GM of multicultural services, explained in this blog post. “When turned on, a female voice will read aloud selections like program titles, network names and time slots as well as DVR and On Demand settings in Spanish, helping viewers decide what to watch.”

X1 subs can activate the Spanish talking guide tapping the "A" button twice on their remote control when their menu language preference is set to Spanish. The feature also can be turned on via the "accessibility settings" within the main settings menu.

Garcia noted that Spanish is the predominant spoken language in bicultural homes in the U.S., and that Comcast has made the feature available to more than 6 million Hispanic households in its service areas.

Following a trial period, the X1 talking guide went live almost a year ago.  Garcia said the feature was activated at least once on almost 1 million set-top boxes last month, double the activation rate in June, and “we tracked close to 100 million utterances.  

Comcast is deploying about 40,000 X1 boxes per day.

Pleased with its customer and employee trials of Comcast’s IP-capable X1 platform, Cox Communications said it has signed a national licensing deal for X1 and has sparked a commercial rollout of  a new version of Cox’s multiscreen “Contour” offering in San Diego.

Cox recently expanded its X1 trial in San Diego, offering it to customers there who contacted the MSO about the pilot. Previously, Cox was limiting the field test to employees and other “friendlies.” Cox had also been testing X1 with select customers in its Middle Georgia systems.

The licensing deal is a big win for Comcast, which has been looking to scale up its platform by partnering up with other MVPDs. Cox was the first operator outside of Comcast to evaluate X1, but Shaw Communications of Canada has also jumped in to trial it, and expects to move ahead with a commercial launch during Shaw’s 2016 fiscal year. Comcast has accelerated its rollout of X1 to about 40,000 boxes per day. Arris and Pace, which are merging, are Comcast's primary X1 box suppliers. 

The Cox licencing deal is also good news for the Reference Design Kit (RDK), the preintegrated software stack for set-tops and gateways being managed by Comcast, Liberty Global and Time  Warner Cable.  

The new national X1 deal comes amid Cox’s pursuit of a “future-state” video project.

Cox’s new iteration of Contour will support in-home linear TV, apps and widgets, and a cloud-based interface for set-top boxes and mobile devices. It will also feature other elements such as a predictive search engine, a voice-activated remote control, and a VOD library with more than 35,000 “choices.”

The new Contour will also offer an HD-DVR with six tuners, and 2 terabytes of storage.  It was not immediately clear if Cox intends to add a Cloud DVR, a feature that’s now part of Comcast’s X1 platform.

"We are always looking for ways to expand and enhance our video experience for our customers," said Steve Necessary, Cox’s vice president of product development and management, in a statement. "After extensive testing of the X1 platform, we are confident that the new technology will take Contour to the next level, evolving the experience across multiple screens and devices inside the home. Since we first launched  Contour, we have been pleased with the results and we are confident that the new Contour experience will be well received by our customers."

Charter Communications’s rollout of its cloud-based Spectrum Guide and new “Worldbox” platform is admittedly behind schedule, but the operator is closing in on launching that product pairing in two markets, Tom Rutledge, Charter’s president and CEO, said on Thursday’s Q3 earnings call.

Spectrum Guide and the Worldbox (pictured), a hybrid QAM/IP device that uses Charter’s new downloadable security system, is being rolled out in St. Lois, Mo.; and in Reno, Nev., “imminently” he said.

Charter hinted in recent FCC filings that Worldboxes were starting to move out into the field, but with respect to the new UI/box mix, Charter is about six weeks behind its original rollout schedule as the MSO irons out software issues, Rutledge said. Earlier this year, Charter said it was also testing Spectrum Guide in Fort Worth, Texas.

Charter had hoped to have Spectrum Guide in front of 1.6 million subscribers this year, but “I don’t think that’s realistic or desirable at this point, given where we are starting,” Rutledge noted. “The plan is to roll it out as rapidly as we can operationalize it.”

So far, that delay does not seem to have hurt Charter, which bucked industry trends by adding 12,000 video subs in the third quarter.

Working primarily with ActiveVideo, a cloud video and apps vendor now owned by a Arris-Charter joint venture, Charter intends to offer the new UI across its set-top base, including non-IP digital boxes that rely on MPEG-based transport. Cisco Systems, which is selling its CPE business to Technicolor, and Humax are the known suppliers of Charter’s new Worldbox.

Rutledge did not shed more light specifically on the MSO's trial of Spectrum TV Stream, a skinny TV product for broadband-only customers that start at $12.99 per month and bundles in a free Roku 3 streaming player. 

But he did note that Charter’s Q3 numbers don’t factor in trial-related activities, while adding “We sell cable television services using IP technology and MPEG technology…What we’re selling is cable television in applications.”

Regarding apps, he said 1.4 million subscribers have downloaded TV Everywhere from Charter to receive services on iOS and Android devices as well as the Roku platform.

Rutledge also reiterated Charter’s position on usage-based broadband pricing: it doesn’t do it now, and has no plans to alter that stance. 

“We don’t do it,” Rutledge said. “We don’t do it because we want to sell more services. That’s our business model.” 

Cox Communications is using a Web site (hat tip: @Jacks_Daddy1, who tweeted it) to promote its trial of Contour 2, a cloud-based interface for set-tops and mobile devices that’s powered by Comcast’s X1 platform.

As reported last week, Cox recently expanded its trial of an X1-based offering in the San Diego area. A Cox official confirmed then that the MSO is taking a “reactive only” approach to the X1 trial in the market, giving customers who call in about Contour an opportunity to try out the X1-based service. Cox’s original Contour video platform for set-tops and tablets was developed in partnership with Cisco Systems/NDS and other partners.

Cox is still pursuing a “future-state” video project, but its trial of an X1-based offering in San Diego plays on many of the base features offered on the platform, including the cloud-based on-screen guide, a “smart search” function that predicts the channel or show a user is trying to pull up using the remote control, and the X1’s personalized and recommended guide views.

In addition to a video overview, the site also touts an in-home app (Comcast calls its version the Xfinity TV app) that lets users watch live TV and VOD titles on any device in the home, the platform’s sports, weather, stocks and traffic apps/widgets, and talks up the platform’s six-tuner HD-DVR (Cox doesn’t specify a box maker, but Pace and Arris are among the suppliers for the XG1 HD-DVR used by Comcast for X1 today). Comcast also offers a cloud DVR for X1 in several markets, but it was not immediately known if that component is part of the current Cox trial (cloud DVR is not mentioned in Cox's Contour 2 web documentation).  

Shaw Communications of Canada announced in June that it was shutting down its original plan to develop an IPTV service to instead try out X1, but hasn’t said when or where it expects to start trials.

In line with National Hispanic Heritage Month (September 15-October 15) and amid the growth of bicultural homes in the U.S. where Spanish is the predominant spoken language, Comcast said it has launched X1 En Espanol, complementing the original English version of its cloud-based video service interface. 

X1 subs can enable the new version by going to the guide Settings menu, selecting "Language," and then choosing the Spanish option. 

“This new experience lets our Latino customers find and discover their favorite programming in the language of their choice and helps bridge the content divide for millions of Spanish-speaking households within the Comcast service area,” Javier Garcia, Comcast’s vice president and general manager of multicultural services, said in this blog post about the launch. "We are constantly developing products and services that change the way people consume entertainment and communicate, and encourage our Latino customers to get in on the action today by accessing the programming of their choice, wherever and whenever they want, in whichever language they prefer."

He added that the voice remote for X1 will “soon” be updated to recognize commands spoken in Spanish, and that X1 has added new features and filters within the guide, including one-touch access to turn on/off the SAP feed via the video toolbar to help viewers more easily discover Spanish-language and SAP-enabled content available on Xfinity On Demand.

Comcast, he said, is also getting close to offering an updated version of its X1 Sports app that will be optimized for soccer. Comcast recently booted up updates for the app, which provides on-screen game-related stats and graphics, for the college and NFL football seasons.

Comcast hasn’t announced how many subscribers are on X1, but it’s been shipping about 30,000 X1 boxes per day.

Comcast has introduced another batch of updates and enhancements for its IP-capable X1 platform, led by a feature that automatically extends the recordings of baseball games and other supported live events.

The new “Auto Extend” option, which takes effect when it’s determined that an event will air past its scheduled airtime, will automatically extend DVR recordings in 30-minute increments to ensure that the customer is able capture the entire event.

The option comes into play only on programming that supports the Auto Extend feature. “Starting out, the feature will be available on major sporting events including NFL Football, MLB Baseball, NBA Basketball, soccer, NHL Hockey as well as NCAA Men’s Football and Basketball, and NASCAR, and we’ll be rolling it out to a wider range of events over time,” Peter Nush, Comcast Cable’s VP, product management, explained in this blog post, noting that X1 subs can also extend the recording of any content manually via the program’s info page.

Comcast, Nush write, is also testing a “Play by Play” DVR feature that lets users jump to important highlighted plays in recorded sporting events, making it “easy to catch up on the game and the big plays you missed quickly.” Recordings supporting this feature, offered by Comcast Labs, will show an overlay screen instructing viewers to press the page up/page down buttons to jump between highlights.

Comcast Labs is also using X1 to test “Welcome Back,” which provides users with a brief update on shows that have been recently recorded to the DVR or are trending. For subs who activate the test, these updates appear when customers first press a key on the remote when they turn the TV on.

On the customer experience end, X1 has added a new row for troubleshooting in the Help section of the Settings menu. “There will now be an option to restart your device, an option for Remote Setup – which easily walks users through pairing their remote – and instructions for programming your remote to the TV and any audio devices,” Nush noted.  

Comcast unleashed these updates as the MSO continues to accelerate the rollout of X1, as it’s now deploying about 30,000 X1 boxes per day. Nearly one-third of Comcast’s triple-play customers are now on the MSO’s next-gen video platform.

Restart Notification, a feature for Comcast’s X1 platform that lets viewers restart a program in progress from the beginning, has moved out of Comcast Labs beta environment to become a default setting for the MSO’s cloud-based video platform.

When the notification appears, viewers can press the “Info” button on their remotes to pull up more information about the show and select “Restart” from the action bar to start the program from the beginning, Peter Nush, VP of product management at Comcast Cable, explained in this blog post highlighting a handful of X1-related updates.

Other recent X1 additions and enhancements include:

-Kids Zone, an X1 feature announced at the INTX show in Chicago, has gone live via Comcast Labs. Kids Zone presents content that is rated and reviewed by Common Sense Media for age-appropriateness, spanning live TV, DVR recordings and nearly 8,500 kid’s movies and TV shows offered via Comcast’s VOD service. 

-Comcast Labs has also added a “Control Panel” to X1 that gives subscribers quick access to service information and frequently used settings without interrupting what they are currently watching. Currently, Control Panel supports elements such as the current time, weather, subscriber account info, X1 tips and tricks, and X1’s Start Power Saver.

-Customers now have the ability to opt-in and kick the tires on all Comcast Labs beta features for X1 through an “Enable All” setting. “Many customers have told us how much they like being able to try things out during the development phase, so this makes it easier for you to stay looped in,” Nush noted.

-Comcast has added the Video Description Icon to the X1’s grid guide for linear TV. The icon signals when a program feature a secondary Video Description Service (DVS) audio track that provides audio descriptions of a program’s key vision elements, a feature, Comcast said, that is of particular value to customers who have low vision or are vision impaired. Customers can turn on the DVS track through the X1’s Accessibility Settings.

Comcast hasn’t announced how many of its 22.3 million video customers are on X1, but chairman and CEO Brian Roberts noted on the company’s first quarter earnings call that about 25% of the operator’s triple-play subs now have the next-gen video service. That means Comcast has at least 2.49 million customers with X1, MoffettNathanson analyst Craig Moffett estimated in a recently issued research note. Based on the MSO's earlier estimation that it was shipping about 20,000 X1 boxes per day, Comcast should have more than 9 million X1 devices deployed. 

Comcast confirmed that it has pushed an update to its “Xi3” client devices that enables the all-IP boxes to buffer as much as 25 minutes of live TV.

Comcast added that capability last month to currently-deployed Xi3s and will be offering it in all Xi3 models shipped to customers from here on out, an MSO spokesperson said. The Xi3, which does not support a local hard drive for DVR functionality (it can access recordings off of the primary XG1 HD-DVR and is expected to support Comcast’s new cloud DVR), buffers live TV via integrated SD (Secure Digital) memory card that carries the “Xfinity Instant Replay” label. The ability to pause live TV on the Xi3 has been high on customer wish lists, according to this thread on the Comcast X1 customer forum.

That feature, which lets Xi3 users rewind, fast-forward and pause recently viewed live TV programming, will apparently also grace a new “XG2” gateway that’s under development, and possibly on the Xi4, a smaller, next-gen version of the Xi3. A Samsung-made XG2 and a Cisco-made Xi4  recently passed through the FCC.

Comcast started to deploy the Xi3 in select markets last fall, noting then that the plan was to make the product “widely available across our footprint” in the first or second quarter of 2015.

The HDMI-connected Xi3 is designed to be a more elegant, non-DVR companion to the primary X1 HD-DVR, able to support the full slate of X1 apps. By comparison, Comcast’s initial batch of non-DVRs (the Pace and Samsung RNG150N) that work in tandem with the X1 HD-DVR and support the MSO's new cloud-based user interface, do not let users pause and rewind live TV. Those RNG-class boxes also support only a subset of X1 apps. This page compares and contrasts the current lineup of equipment, including set-tops and remotes, for X1. 

Comcast has deployed more than 5 million X1 boxes so far.