Comcast announced on Tuesday that Xfinity customers on the X1 Entertainment Operating System can now live stream their favorite life moments over the Internet from their smartphone to the television to share with friends and family.
Through the company’s new Xfinity Share app, customers can live stream or send photos and recorded videos to their TV, or to the TV of another X1 customer, as well as live stream and share content to mobile phones.
To use Xfinity Share, currently both the sender and receiver must be Xfinity Triple Play customers with X1 DVR capable set-top boxes.
“We’re giving our customers the power to share special moments in their lives as they happen,” said Patti Loyack, vice president of Communications, Comcast Cable. “Whether a child’s baseball game, a graduation or just a beautiful sunset, Share lets users broadcast whatever they see in real time to the biggest screen in the home. So now a grandmother in San Francisco can watch along on her TV at the exact moment her grandson in Philadelphia blows out his birthday candles.”
To stream to the TV, users need to follow these steps: open the Xfinity Share app, select “Stream Live” and accept the notification that appears on the TV.
The Xfinity Share app is available to download for free from the Apple Store for iOS devices or from Google Play for Android devices. The app leverages WebRTC, an open Internet standard that supports real-time communication over Web browsers. Comcast is one of the first companies to optimize this technology for the TV.
“WebRTC is a powerful technology that we’re bringing to the TV,” said Franklyn Athias, senior vice Ppesident, Comcast IP Communications Services. “WebRTC and X1 are a natural fit. The most advanced television entertainment operating system and the most flexible real-time communications tool combine to offer a cross-platform, multimedia experience like no other. We’re connecting customers to whom and what they love in more ways than ever.”
Later this year, additional features will be added to Share including the ability to:
- Share content with virtually anyone by sending a URL via email
- Send content to up to five people at the same time
- Stop, pause and rewind the live stream
- Store the live stream in the X1 Photos app
Any photos or recorded videos sent from Xfinity Share are stored in and accessible via the X1 Photos app. Customers can turn off share notifications in the Photos app as well.