Editor’s note: Inexplicably, Comcast invited us to the Death Star today for a pow-wow with Brian Roberts pumping up Comcast-NBC’s synergistic Olympics coverage. Seeing as though I couldn’t guarantee that I wouldn’t stand up in the middle of the thing and launch into an impromptu, Chris Christie-like public trying of Roberts, I sent Jim, who is more impressionable and less of an asshole than me. They served him Federal Donuts, which is the most surefire way to win over a hipster short of building them their own beer garden with an area for word-of-mouth indie performances. This is what he learned.

In a room on the 45th floor of the Comcast Center, which was more well lit than I expected the Death Star to be (and with better TVs), Comcast CEO Brian Roberts this morning laid out his company’s all-encompassing plan for covering the upcoming Rio Olympics. The main focus is the X1 platform – only 40% of Comcast’s customers have it – but no matter the system, they’re offering more coverage than we’ve ever seen.

Without even taking the X1 into account, Roberts said this year’s Rio coverage would dwarf that of NBC’s first Olympics. In 1996, NBC and NBC alone broadcasted 172 hours of coverage. This year, through multiple networks, 40 dedicated online streams, and more, they’ll broadcast 6,700 hours (the equivalent of every NFL regular season game since 2008).

With X1, viewers will be able to access a single menu which shows all of the day’s competitions. From there, you can tune into what’s live on TV, or click over to one of the 40 live streams, coming over the internet from the cloud, on your TV. Here’s how that’ll look:

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Though the streams are available to all cable subscribers (even non-Comcast) through the NBC Sports app, only with X1 are they accessible on your TV, through your cable box. It’s the first time that NBC Sports streams are available to users in that manner. That’s a big deal. For example, as you can see above, you can choose to watch the NBC broadcast of team gymnastics, or pick an online stream of an individual competition that’s part of the event. They also added “Gold Zone” as a separate menu option, which Roberts referred to as the “excitement channel” (think of it as a kind of NFL RedZone for Rio).


Chief Product Officer Chris Satchell, a barrell-chested Brit who comes off as a slightly less dangerous Jason Statham, told the gathered media that “it’s actually gonna work.” They added over 300 athlete profiles and 1,500 Olympics-specific voice commands for the X1 remote that allows you to access anything you can think of. You can ask “When is Michael Phelps on?” (though we can’t promise it won’t pull the YouTube video of “Get My Michael Phelps On”) and it’ll bring you all of the listed events. You’ll have access to behind-the-scenes video packages, profiles, and live info about the event you’re watchin. For example, which swimmer is in which lane– a nice touch:

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You’ll also have the ability to mark contests, countries, and athletes as “Favorites.”

People often talk about “the future of TV,” and this may well be what it looks like… when the broadcasting network and provider are one and the same:

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Still, it’s all new. It’s supposed to work, but will it? Roberts told a story about a voice command that he tried last night that didn’t work, so he huddled with his team to make it work. [Editor’s note: Obvious puff line from Roberts, but I’ll let it stand.] There will likely be a lot of that during Rio, as customers ask questions in their own ways and don’t get the results they like. It should be fine but, as Roberts said, “somebody’s gotta go first,” and Comcast believes they’re staffed readily and appropriately should something fail.

Rio is obviously the testing ground for this, but with more and more access to sporting events being available online in addition to a simple TV broadcast, it remains to be seen where this could go in the future. Roberts hypothetically imagined a future golf tournament where streams are available to watch individual holes in addition to the TV broadcast of the tourney. Something like this is already available for most major tournaments through streaming apps, but Comcast wants it to all live inside your cable box and remote.

Comcast is many things: large, potentially evil, and tone deaf to consumers at the ground level. They also might just be the forebearers of something huge here. Then again, they’re in the unique position of owning the entire package here.