Comcast Corp. has launched X1, its IP-capable, cloud-friendly video platform, in Colorado Springs, company SVP and GM of Video Services Marcien Jenckes revealed on the company blog. The Springs is the seventh Comcast market to get X1, which is already deployed in Atlanta and Augusta, Ga.; Boston; Chattanooga, Tenn.; San Francisco; and, most recently, the Philadelphia area. Comcast also operates in a lot of other Colorado markets, including Denver, but has not specified its X1 expansion plan for the state. (See Comcast's X1 Flies Into Philly.) On Wednesday's fourth-quarter earnings call, Comcast Cable President and CEO Neil Smit said the MSO has been pleased with the X1's ability to reduce churn and boost customer satisfaction in the early phase of its rollout, so Comcast will deploy X1 "throughout the majority of our footprint this year based on those results." Comcast is pitching X1, a service that supports a new cloud-based interface and a growing set of interactive apps, primarily to new triple-play customers. The initial version of the service is being delivered via the Pace plc-made XG1 HD-DVR. Comcast has other X1 products on the roadmap, including an all-IP set-top called the Xi3 and a "headless" gateway called the XG5. (See Comcast's All-Service Gateways Go 'Headless' .) Smit said it's still too preliminary to judge how X1 is affecting Comcast's overall video business, but called it a "great platform for future growth." Smit made the comments the morning after Comcast reported losing just 7,000 video subs in the fourth quarter, and would have gained video subs if not for Superstorm Sandy. It was the ninth consecutive quarter that Comcast saw year-over-year improvements in video subs. For all of 2012, Comcast trimmed video losses by more than 25 percent over 2011. (See Comcast Whiffs On Video Subs But Scores NBCU.)

— Jeff Baumgartner, Site Editor, Light Reading Cable