Comcast’s XClass TV (Image credit: Comcast)
By
Source: www.nexttv.com, April 2022
Flex to be expanded to support new devices and functions
Charter Communications and Comcast have formed a joint venture to develop a new streaming platform that will be able to handle a new generation of devices and provide additional functions.
To form the joint venture, Comcast is licensing its Flex streaming platform and contributing the retail business of its XClass TVs and the Xumo streaming service. Charter will be contributing $900 million, funded over multiple years.
“We’re thrilled to partner with Charter to bring this platform and its award-winning experience to millions of new customers,“ Comcast Cable CEO Dave Watson said. “These products are all designed to make search and discovery across live, on-demand and streaming video seamless and incredibly simple for consumers.
“This partnership uniquely brings together more than a decade of technical innovation, national scale and new opportunities to monetize our combined investment,” Watson said.
Added Charter chairman and CEO Tom Rutledge: “Our new venture will bring a full-featured operating platform, new devices, and smart TVs with a robust app store providing a more streamlined and aggregated experience for the customer. As the video landscape continues to evolve, this venture will increase retail consumer options, compete at scale with established national platforms, and join our existing lineup of options for the Spectrum TV App available on most customer-owned streaming devices.”
The joint venture will offer app developers, streamers, retailers, operators and hardware manufacturers an opportunity to reach customers in major markets across the country with the platform.
It will support a variety of branded 4K streaming devices and smart TVs, providing consumers with a world-class user experience and navigation, all the top apps and more choice in the streaming marketplace, Charter and Comcast said. ▪️
Jon has been business editor of Broadcasting+Cable since 2010. He focuses on revenue-generating activities, including advertising and distribution, as well as executive intrigue and merger and acquisition activity. Just about any story is fair game, if a dollar sign can make its way into the article. Before B+C, Jon covered the industry for TVWeek, Cable World, Electronic Media, Advertising Age and The New York Post. A native New Yorker, Jon is hiding in plain sight in the suburbs of Chicago.
