Xumo, a joint venture between Comcast and Charter Communications, has begun rolling out its Xumo Stream Box to Charter’s Spectrum customers, with plans to bring it to Comcast’s Xfinity homes soon. The Xumo Stream Box is powered by Comcast’s Entertainment Operating System (EOS), designed to simplify the process of finding content, regardless of where it resides. “Xumo is streaming simplified, bringing a live TV experience together with all the top apps,” Charter President of Product and Technology Rich DiGeronimo said of the new device. Xumo Stream Box can be used to find, discover and select content on-demand using voice control. Read more

Roku TV and the Roku player are getting new features including better search and discovery to complement its more than 400 free live linear TV channels. The upgrades will begin rolling out with the introduction of Roku OS 12.5 in the coming weeks. Highlights include the ability to follow a favorite sports team, new music channels and the ability to link Roku’s Photo Streams image-based screensaver to a Google Photos account, so personal pictures can be displayed between viewing events. The changes are across a wide range of features targeting sports enthusiasts and others, including technical purists and casual viewers who need help finding entertainment options. Read more

Dell Technologies is expanding its Generative AI Solutions portfolio to help enterprise customers add GenAI to their workflow. The expansion includes support for advanced infrastructure and collaborative data solutions that optimize and help secure intelligence gathering and utilization. Dell takes a “validated design” approach to optimization and acceleration, testing different hardware configurations designed to fit the needs of various use cases. Dell has partnered with Nvidia for validated GenAI design for model customization, and with Starburst on data lakehouse solutions that tap multi-cloud data for AI end-use. Read more

Sony is leveraging the power of its hardware platforms to expand its streaming efforts. What has since 2021 been known as Bravia Core is now rebranded as Sony Pictures Core and will be coming to PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 game consoles, with access to 2,000 current and classic films available for rent or purchase. In addition to being able to order Sony Pictures content through Bravia XR TVs, users will be able to transact straight through their consoles, with access to popular films such as “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse,” “Uncharted,” “No Hard Feelings,” “Bullet Train” and “Ghostbusters: Afterlife,” among others. Read more

Likewise, a startup discovery platform backed by Bill Gates, is launching its own free chatbot named Pix. Billed as “the world’s first personal entertainment companion,” Pix helps users find TV shows, movies, books and podcasts, drawing from 600 million consumer data points. Trained on OpenAI models, Pix uses natural-language processing to answer user questions submitted by text, email or on the web at Likewise.com. Responses are promised “within seconds,” and Pix will learn users’ preferences over time. Likewise claims to have more than six million registered users. Read more