Xfinity TV Just Got A Whole Lot Cooler

Brian Roberts will speak later this afternoon at the annual Citi Conference for Media, Entertainment and Telecommunications. Here's a link to the audio stream (registration required.) In a nutshell, he's making three cool announcements about Xfinity TV.

First -- and perhaps best of all -- we plan to offer live TV streaming on tablet devices in-the-home later this year. This means customers with tablets and a wireless router can watch and enjoy live TV anywhere in the house. For example, you could watch the news to get weather and traffic updates in any room while you're getting ready for work. You could watch a program on the porch or in some quiet corner in your home. Or you could watch a cooking show in the kitchen with your pots and pans and spices handy. In other words, your tablet can be magically transformed into a personal TV set you can carry all around your home.

Second, Brian announced that the play now feature for the Xfinity TV iPad app will arrive in the coming weeks. When it does, it will come stocked with nearly 3,000 hours of On Demand content that can be watched anywhere, anytime -- inside or outside the home -- and we'll continue to add even more choices in the future. That means you can watch Xfinity TV in airports, doctors offices, on the train -- anywhere you can find a wireless connection.

If you haven't already seen it, Neil Smit showed a demo at Web 2.0 of what that feature looks like. Watch it here.

Last, but certainly not least, we've enhanced the Xfinity TV website so you can now transform a laptop or a desktop computer into a sophisticated search engine and remote control. In other words, you can search and browse live TV programs and On Demand content on your computer and then click on it to change the channel on your television set. Pretty cool, right?

We also recently gave www.xfinitytv.com a new look and feel. Have a look.

Looking ahead, we have more online enhancements and app releases in the pipeline. It's all part of a much larger effort to reinvent how customers interact with their entertainment and communications services on TV, online and on mobile devices. So stay tuned.