Comcast is to work with technology developed for Sky’s Now TV platform as part of a direct-to-consumer offering.
Stephen Burke, senior EVP & CEO, NBCUniversal, told an investor call the new service would include 80% of the broadcaster’s most popular shows. It would be distributed free to Comcast customers in North America and Sky subscribers in Europe.
Outside of the Comcast/Sky footprint the new service would also be made available for a small subscription, described as comparable to other SVOD services in the market.
“We think this approach has a much better chance to get scale quickly,” said Burke. “There’s nothing better than free for consumers, and we have enough product that consumers are currently viewing on other platforms online for free and charged that we think putting it all together in one place, very, very good technology, and then leveraging our relationship with Comcast Cable and Sky.
NOW TV launched in 2012 using boxes developed by Roku in which Sky is a minority shareholder.
But it is also two-way traffic with Comcast technology being deployed in the UK. “We really like the Comcast voice platform, and we’re going to be incorporating that for Sky Q, and we’ll consolidate that and use the technology there,” revealed Sky Group CEO Jeremy Darroch.
Comcast’s advanced voice control platform was built to power the X1 Voice Remote, though there are clear overlaps with the technology already in place for voice control on Sky Q.
Source: https://www.broadbandtvnews.com/2019/01/28/comcast-to-build-on-skys-now-tv-platform/