Sports will undoubtedly take over our TV time in February with the Super Bowl, the Milan-Cortina Winter Games, and the NBA All-Star Game. If you’re an Xfinity TV customer, you’ll be able to watch the Winter Olympics with features like RealTime 4K, Fan View, and customizable Multiview displays. Comcast announced its new suite of Olympic-ready features on Friday, including an AI-powered DVR function.
CNET checked out a demo of the Olympics experience, and the AI-assisted DVR feature stood out for its convenience. When you record something, AI identifies key parts, which appear as on-screen marks. I watched a playback of an opening ceremony as an example, and the markers were labeled with descriptions like «Team USA enters» to indicate what was going on.
«What we have done is we’ve used AI to tag the most important moments in the opening ceremony, so you can get to them quickly and easily without having to sift through,» said Vito Forlenza, vice president of sports entertainment at Comcast. He added that it gives viewers control over what they watch.
Like its sister brand, Peacock, Xfinity aims to create immersive and personalized viewing experiences for fans of the Winter Games, which will start broadcasting on Feb. 6. A themed homepage puts all things Milan Cortina front and center, where viewers can choose to click on tiles for live Olympic events on NBC, Peacock, USA and CNBC, or dig into content like highlights. The main home screen also houses a tab for the Olympics hub, which can be launched with a click or by speaking into your Xfinity voice remote.
Inside the hub, there’s a dedicated row for Peacock programming, as well as access to Multiview, medal counts, highlights and the Fan View feature. You may already be familiar with Fan View, as it rolled out last year for NBA and NFL games. Use it to handpick your favorite sports and keep up with the latest stats, medal wins and programming. With its immersive shots, this feature can also take you into Olympic snow parks for bobsledding, skiing and snowboarding, so it almost feels like you’re there.
The breakout section for medal counts is regularly updated throughout the games. Fan View also has shortcuts to bring you to live broadcasts, Multiview or highlights. You can check out TikTok-style short-form video highlights and other content.
Rather than rely on a preselected display for Multiview, viewers can customize what they want to watch like a DIY-er. If you want all four screens to show Olympics coverage, you can. Or you can choose from other live sports — such as basketball, the NFL, and Olympic figure skating.
Need to see better? Enlarge one game on the Multiview screen with the other three displays intact. Those who’d rather not exit Multiview can still pull up Fan View to scroll through stats or navigate to Comcast’s sports betting partner sites (if it’s legal where they live).
The RealTime 4K addition that was announced for the Super Bowl will also be available for the Olympics, complemented by Dolby Atmos and Dolby Vision. And on game day, a Peacock 4K feed will be embedded in the channel guide, and it’ll switch from Olympic coverage to the Super Bowl when it’s time. All Xfinity customers can watch the feed.
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