NEW YORK — Charter and Comcast held a special event today to debut their much-anticipated Xumo Stream Box. Xumo is the companies’ joint venture to help their subscribers find video content across their linear and on-demand cable channels, and also across a multitude of streaming apps.
But Xumo requires a piece of hardware, and that’s where the Stream Box comes in. With the Xumo Stream Box customers have one place to find something to watch, whether it’s live TV, on-demand content or a streaming app.
Upon startup of the Stream Box, customers will see live video playing from the device’s primary video service app such as Spectrum TV or Xfinity Stream. Additionally, customers can use a built-in channel guide to browse through subscribed channels.
But the real magic is that the Xumo Stream Box comes with the ability to browse and access hundreds of streaming apps, including Apple TV+, Disney+, Hulu, Max, Netflix, Peacock, Pluto, Prime Video, Tubi and Xumo Play, to name a few.
The Xumo Stream Box will first be rolled out to Charter’s Spectrum households, with plans to bring it to Comcast’s Xfinity homes soon.
New Spectrum video customers will receive one Xumo Stream Box device at no cost for the first year. Additional Xumo Stream Boxes are available directly from Spectrum to purchase or for a service fee.
Rich DiGeronimo, president of Product and Technology for Charter, explained at today's event why Charter got into the Xumo JV with Comcast, “For Charter we want to still meaningfully participate in the video business, even as this 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. The second reason is we want to be able to leverage our sales and marketing capabilities to distribute this independent retail platform for our video customers but also for our internet-only customers. Because we can now participate through the venture in the monetization of third party apps in all new ways, that can be through advertising could be through placement could be through revenue share."
Charter and Comcast say their Xumo service features AI-driven personalization and “human-led editorial recommendations” to help customers find something to watch without having to jump in and out of apps.
Other features of Stream Box include universal voice search, which allows the customer to discover content with a simple voice command into the remote.
The service also includes favorite lists for every member of the household, regardless of where the content lives or how it’s delivered.
The Xumo Stream Box is the newest device to be powered by Comcast’s Entertainment Operating System (OS).