Comcast-Charter Streaming Venture Xumo Begins Launch Of New Device In Spectrum Footprint, Promising To “Make TV Easy Again”

Dade Hayes
·3 min read
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Xumo, a new 50-50 joint streaming venture between Comcast and Charter Communications, has started rolling out its new devices to customers of Charter’s Spectrum video service.

The announcement was made after senior executives from Comcast and Charter gathered in New York on Wednesday for a presentation and demo of the Xumo Stream Box. The box — built on the technology of Comcast’s Flex devices, which debuted in 2017 — will be given to Spectrum video customers at no cost for the first year. Customers will have the option to pay for additional boxes either as a purchase or via a service fee. Comcast will soon offer Xumo Stream Box to new Xfinity Internet customers.

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The joint venture was first announced about 18 months ago. Both companies, which are the two largest cable operators in the U.S., have been looking for ways to retain their significant footholds as the traditional pay-TV ecosystem continues to be transformed by streaming. Charter several weeks ago was involved in a high-profile carriage fight with Disney. During that battle, which resulted in a 10-day period of ESPN, ABC and other networks going dark for 14.7 million Charter customers.

During the impasse, senior Charter executives proclaimed their willingness to consider a secular move away from the video business given steady increases in carriage fees and “leakage” of TV programming into direct-to-consumer streaming. The Xumo venture, which involved Charter paying $900 million in order to benefit from Comcast’s technology, offers what the companies hope will be a new bulwark against cord-cutting, which is reducing the pay-TV bundle by more than 5 million subscribers each year.

“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,” Xumo president Marcien Jenckes said in a press release. “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.”

Rich DiGeronimo, President, Product and Technology for Charter, described Xumo as “streaming simplified, bringing a live TV experience together with all the top apps.” The box delivers “endless entertainment options simplified,” he added, “with aggregated search across apps and curated content offerings based on the customer’s interests and subscriptions, which will be even more powerful as direct-to-consumer apps are included with Spectrum service.”

The JV partners are touting Xumo as an “integrated, content-forward interface” supported by voice technology. When the device is powered on, customers will see video playing from a primary video service app like Spectrum TV, Xfinity Stream or Xumo Play. A built-in channel guide enables browsing through subscribed channels. The box has “hundreds” of built-in apps and access to subscription-based and free, ad-supported apps, among them Apple TV+, Disney+, Hulu, Max, Netflix, Peacock, Pluto, Prime Video and Tubi.

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