Brian Roberts Demonstrates Next Generation Xfinity TV Experience
Amid all that has been written about Brian Roberts buttoned-down and tight-as-a-drum demo of Comcast's new Next Generation Xfinity TV, I offer these few additional observations.
- Once again, Roberts have proven to be a surprisingly effective pitchman and presenter, particularly on camera, and seems to be comfortable in that role in a way many CEOs simply aren't.
- After listening for three days to a number of Cable Show speakers equate the word "cloud" with "security risk," it was nice to see Comcast place the word back in a favorable light.
- From a design perspective, one thing that really jumped out to me is the guide's pull-down menu. A lot of experts this week talked about the importance of new applications and product wrinkles that relied upon and leveraged established consumer behavior. Given that, is there any more well-established humanbehavior these days than moving a cursor across a screen that walks, talks and acts like a website?
- This is just a hunch, but watch what the new Xfinity cloud's Pandora application does for the internet's "music genome project." Pandora is one of those web-based services that, once someone's tried it, becomes addictive.
My sense is, all it needs is broader exposure (and access) to elevate its standing in the public consciousness and to have it start to gain traction with even casual music consumers. And, let's be honest, if there's one thing an application on a Comcast state-of-the-art, billion-bits-a-second cloud guide would qualify as, it's broader exposure.