Comcast recently added support for Spanish to a “talking guide” that was introduced last year to the MSO’s cloud-powered X1 platform for the blind and visually disabled.
“We’re now expanding the feature to better serve our Spanish-speaking customers, with the launch of the Spanish Talking Guide,” Javier Garcia, Comcast’s VP and GM of multicultural services, explained in this blog post. “When turned on, a female voice will read aloud selections like program titles, network names and time slots as well as DVR and On Demand settings in Spanish, helping viewers decide what to watch.”
X1 subs can activate the Spanish talking guide tapping the "A" button twice on their remote control when their menu language preference is set to Spanish. The feature also can be turned on via the "accessibility settings" within the main settings menu.
Garcia noted that Spanish is the predominant spoken language in bicultural homes in the U.S., and that Comcast has made the feature available to more than 6 million Hispanic households in its service areas.
Following a trial period, the X1 talking guide went live almost a year ago. Garcia said the feature was activated at least once on almost 1 million set-top boxes last month, double the activation rate in June, and “we tracked close to 100 million utterances.
Comcast is deploying about 40,000 X1 boxes per day.
