Comcast and Charter’s joint venture Xumo will power free, ad-supported streaming channels on TCL smart television sets, an executive confirmed in a news report this week.
On Thursday, Xumo Chief Revenue Officer Colin Petrie-Norris told the website Fierce Video that the company will bring 55 streaming channels to original electronic manufacturers (OEMs) of smart TV sets in North America, starting with TCL.
“TCL is really an exciting new partner for us,” Petrie-Norris said.
Xumo and TCL have yet to say which TV sets will get the new ad-supported channels. TCL currently offers smart TV sets powered by the Roku and Android TV operating systems. A free, ad-supported streaming video app called TCL Channel is available for both platforms.
Related: Read more details about Xumo’s partnership with TCL at Fierce Video
It is the second third-party partnership confirmed by Xumo since Comcast and Charter formed the joint venture last year. In April, Xumo revealed it was powering more than 70 free, ad-supported streaming channels offered natively through the “Live” tab on Google TV-powered devices, to include the Chromecast with Google TV. The website 9to5Mac was first to report that Google TV would launch with Xumo-powered channels.
The channels available on Google TV’s Live tab are just a sampling of the hundreds of free, ad-supported streams that are powered by Xumo. The joint venture offers access to all of its streaming through the free Xumo Play app, which is widely supported across a number of streaming TV platforms, smartphones and tablets.
This week, Petrie-Norris said the partnership Xumo is scoring with third-party companies reflects the high quality of the channels and the underlying technology that makes them accessible to streamers.
“This is why a company like TCL and others are using us as we obviously provide this full turnkey approach with content plus technology,” he said. “But, really, the quality of the channels which we provide are really what’s setting us apart here.”
