May 04, 2015
Gene J. Puskar/for PhillyVoice
In this Feb. 15, 2011 file photo, a Comcast logo is displayed on an installation truck in Pittsburgh.
Comcast will be providing a new live streaming service for Xfinity customers on the X1 Entertainment Operating System, the company announced Monday.
The new service, dubbed the Xfinity Share app, will allow users to live stream or send photos and videos from their smartphones to their own T.V.'s as well as the T.V.'s of other X1 customers. Both the sender and the receiver must be Xfinity Triple Play customers with X1 DVR capable set-top boxes. Instructions on how to download and use the app are available here.
While the official announcement didn't address the possibility of customers using the service to illegally pirate content to other customomers, it does explicitly say in the company's terms of service that customers agree not to use Comcast Web Services for "posting, storing, transmitting or disseminating information, data or material ... which infringes the intellectual property rights of any person or entity."
The company says they plan to add several features to the service by the end of the year, including being available on tablets and allowing customers to stream to up to five other X1 customers at the same time. They also plan to implement the ability to stop, pause, and rewind the stream and store the stream in the X1 Photos app.
The company is giving sneak peaks on how the service will work on the Xfinity Youtube page. From giving a live performance to your grandmother:
To asking your high school crush to prom:
Note to high school boys: Asking a girl to prom over video streaming is a terrible, impersonal way to do so, and will go almost as poorly as this did:
