Charter and Comcast Officially Roll Out Xumo Streaming Box

Can cable companies take a bite out of the streaming ecosystems created by Apple, Roku and Amazon?

Comcast and Charter think so. And Xumo is their weapon of choice. 

The cable giants on Wednesday officially pulled back the curtain on their Xumo product, with Charter Communications beginning to roll it out immediately to its subscriber footprint, and Comcast set to follow in coming months. 

The Xumo interface, which is built on Comcast’s Entertainment OS platform, integrates pay TV into its platform, seamlessly integrating the live TV into the offering. But it also puts apps front and center, populating the home page depending on what services users subscribe to. 

For Charter, which recently cut a deal to include Disney+ into its base pay TV tier, it is clearly a vision in which its live TV and streaming entertainment apps live side by side.

“We want to still meaningfully participate in the video business,” said Rich DiGeronimo, president of product and technology for Charter, speaking at the event in midtown Manhattan. “Even as the industry is evolving at a rapid pace, and even though traditional linear viewership is in a state of decline, streaming viewership is significantly up and Charter wants to be able to participate in that growth.”

In fact, Charter’s recent deal to include Disney+ in some pay TV packages also made the presentation.

“Spectrum is now including programmer direct-to-consumer apps within some of these packages,” DiGeronimo added, with a Disney+ tile conspicuously placed on the screen. “And we think that that’s really important to make it easy for customers to find the value of the package they get with Spectrum and to showcase those applications front and center as part of the package.”

For Comcast, the Xumo box will also be made available to internet subscribers, who can add whatever streaming apps they use. 

Comcast and Charter announced the Xumo joint venture last year, combining the Xumo free streaming service, Comcast tech, and cash to create what is effectively a next-generation cable box, with a voice-activated UX, and a platform that automatically locates content accessible via the subscriptions users own, or live pay TV, where applicable.

“Watching TV was designed to be a relaxing, lean-back experience, but today’s fractured entertainment landscape has added a level of complexity that makes finding something to watch more burdensome for consumers,” said Marcien Jenckes, president of Xumo. “When we started Xumo, we set out with the ambition to take the decades of entertainment experience and technical innovation from Comcast and Charter and build a complete entertainment experience that breaks down the streaming silos and makes TV easy again.”