Power

Comcast is looking to enter the smart TV wars

The TV giant wants to license its set-top box operating system to TV manufacturers.

Comcast is looking to enter the smart TV wars

At the center of these discussions has been Comcast's X1 platform, which the company built as an operating system for its own set-top boxes over the past decade.

Photo: Comcast

Comcast wants to turn the software running on its set-top boxes into an operating system for smart TVs, Protocol has learned from multiple industry insiders with knowledge of the company's plans.

The company began pitching TV manufacturers on the idea in recent months and had some conversations on the subject at CES in January. It's unclear how far these talks have progressed, but the push underlines the growing importance of smart TVs as a major platform for the future of entertainment.

A Comcast spokesperson declined to comment.

At the center of these discussions has been Comcast's X1 platform, which the company built as an operating system for its own set-top boxes over the past decade. In addition to running on the company's cable boxes, X1 also powers Flex, the Roku-like streaming hardware launched by Comcast last year. Comcast has also for some time pitched X1 to fellow cable operators. Cox, for instance, runs X1 hardware and software under its Contour brand, and Charter executives have publicly acknowledged that the two companies have been negotiating a similar licensing deal.

However, operators like Cox effectively just license and ship white-labeled Comcast hardware. The company's talks with TV makers go a lot further, and would result in X1 running on third-party devices. It would also be the first time that X1 runs directly on a smart TV.

Smart TVs are an attractive target for Comcast for a number of reasons: Like all cable companies, Comcast has been bleeding subscribers. During the first six months of 2020 alone, 815,000 of its customers cut the cord. This year, Comcast made some major moves to target these cord cutters with its own streaming services. The company launched Peacock, its own paid streaming service, last month. And in February, it acquired Xumo, a free streaming service that targets cord cutters with a cable-like TV experience.

However, Comcast's efforts to grow these services have been hampered by conflicts with a new crop of gatekeepers: Peacock's apps are still not available on Roku or Amazon streaming devices, or on smart TVs running Roku's and Amazon's operating systems. TVs that have Comcast's X1 system built-in could put the company's own streaming services front and center, while also increasing Comcast's leverage in negotiations with competitors like Roku and Amazon.

Comcast began building X1 at its Silicon Valley Innovation Lab under the code name "Xcalibur" around a decade ago, and it launched the first set-top box running the platform in 2012. Originally built for its own TV service, X1 has since expanded to run third-party streaming apps from services like Netflix and YouTube.

In September of last year, Comcast acquired Metrological, a company that has been working on bridging the gap between cable operator platforms and streaming apps. Industry insiders told Protocol that Metrological would likely play a major role in getting X1 to work on smart TVs as well.

Even with all the pieces in place, it's unclear whether Comcast will actually succeed in persuading TV makers to adopt its platform. The smart TV OS market has been fiercely competitive, with Roku, Amazon and Google all pitching their software to a small group of manufacturers. Breaking into that world is not an easy feat.

Case in point: Samsung, which runs its own Tizen-based OS on its smart TVs, announced a year ago that it was looking to license the system to its competitors as well. The company has yet to announce any deals with fellow TV manufacturers.

Fintech

Judge Zia Faruqui is trying to teach you crypto, one ‘SNL’ reference at a time

His decisions on major cryptocurrency cases have quoted "The Big Lebowski," "SNL," and "Dr. Strangelove." That’s because he wants you — yes, you — to read them.

The ways Zia Faruqui (right) has weighed on cases that have come before him can give lawyers clues as to what legal frameworks will pass muster.

Photo: Carolyn Van Houten/The Washington Post via Getty Images

“Cryptocurrency and related software analytics tools are ‘The wave of the future, Dude. One hundred percent electronic.’”

That’s not a quote from "The Big Lebowski" — at least, not directly. It’s a quote from a Washington, D.C., district court memorandum opinion on the role cryptocurrency analytics tools can play in government investigations. The author is Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui.

Keep ReadingShow less
Veronica Irwin

Veronica Irwin (@vronirwin) is a San Francisco-based reporter at Protocol covering fintech. Previously she was at the San Francisco Examiner, covering tech from a hyper-local angle. Before that, her byline was featured in SF Weekly, The Nation, Techworker, Ms. Magazine and The Frisc.

The financial technology transformation is driving competition, creating consumer choice, and shaping the future of finance. Hear from seven fintech leaders who are reshaping the future of finance, and join the inaugural Financial Technology Association Fintech Summit to learn more.

Keep ReadingShow less
FTA
The Financial Technology Association (FTA) represents industry leaders shaping the future of finance. We champion the power of technology-centered financial services and advocate for the modernization of financial regulation to support inclusion and responsible innovation.
Enterprise

AWS CEO: The cloud isn’t just about technology

As AWS preps for its annual re:Invent conference, Adam Selipsky talks product strategy, support for hybrid environments, and the value of the cloud in uncertain economic times.

Photo: Noah Berger/Getty Images for Amazon Web Services

AWS is gearing up for re:Invent, its annual cloud computing conference where announcements this year are expected to focus on its end-to-end data strategy and delivering new industry-specific services.

It will be the second re:Invent with CEO Adam Selipsky as leader of the industry’s largest cloud provider after his return last year to AWS from data visualization company Tableau Software.

Keep ReadingShow less
Donna Goodison

Donna Goodison (@dgoodison) is Protocol's senior reporter focusing on enterprise infrastructure technology, from the 'Big 3' cloud computing providers to data centers. She previously covered the public cloud at CRN after 15 years as a business reporter for the Boston Herald. Based in Massachusetts, she also has worked as a Boston Globe freelancer, business reporter at the Boston Business Journal and real estate reporter at Banker & Tradesman after toiling at weekly newspapers.

Image: Protocol

We launched Protocol in February 2020 to cover the evolving power center of tech. It is with deep sadness that just under three years later, we are winding down the publication.

As of today, we will not publish any more stories. All of our newsletters, apart from our flagship, Source Code, will no longer be sent. Source Code will be published and sent for the next few weeks, but it will also close down in December.

Keep ReadingShow less
Bennett Richardson

Bennett Richardson ( @bennettrich) is the president of Protocol. Prior to joining Protocol in 2019, Bennett was executive director of global strategic partnerships at POLITICO, where he led strategic growth efforts including POLITICO's European expansion in Brussels and POLITICO's creative agency POLITICO Focus during his six years with the company. Prior to POLITICO, Bennett was co-founder and CMO of Hinge, the mobile dating company recently acquired by Match Group. Bennett began his career in digital and social brand marketing working with major brands across tech, energy, and health care at leading marketing and communications agencies including Edelman and GMMB. Bennett is originally from Portland, Maine, and received his bachelor's degree from Colgate University.

Enterprise

Why large enterprises struggle to find suitable platforms for MLops

As companies expand their use of AI beyond running just a few machine learning models, and as larger enterprises go from deploying hundreds of models to thousands and even millions of models, ML practitioners say that they have yet to find what they need from prepackaged MLops systems.

As companies expand their use of AI beyond running just a few machine learning models, ML practitioners say that they have yet to find what they need from prepackaged MLops systems.

Photo: artpartner-images via Getty Images

On any given day, Lily AI runs hundreds of machine learning models using computer vision and natural language processing that are customized for its retail and ecommerce clients to make website product recommendations, forecast demand, and plan merchandising. But this spring when the company was in the market for a machine learning operations platform to manage its expanding model roster, it wasn’t easy to find a suitable off-the-shelf system that could handle such a large number of models in deployment while also meeting other criteria.

Some MLops platforms are not well-suited for maintaining even more than 10 machine learning models when it comes to keeping track of data, navigating their user interfaces, or reporting capabilities, Matthew Nokleby, machine learning manager for Lily AI’s product intelligence team, told Protocol earlier this year. “The duct tape starts to show,” he said.

Keep ReadingShow less
Kate Kaye

Kate Kaye is an award-winning multimedia reporter digging deep and telling print, digital and audio stories. She covers AI and data for Protocol. Her reporting on AI and tech ethics issues has been published in OneZero, Fast Company, MIT Technology Review, CityLab, Ad Age and Digiday and heard on NPR. Kate is the creator of RedTailMedia.org and is the author of "Campaign '08: A Turning Point for Digital Media," a book about how the 2008 presidential campaigns used digital media and data.

Latest Stories
Bulletins