For Burke and others at Comcast, the new brand “encompasses our robust technology platform, expanded services we are offering today, and the future innovations we are planning to deliver.” Another way to look at it: Xfinity is a way to stress what Comcast has coming, not what it has been, to give customers a new bottle and a blend of old and new beer at the same time. Xfinity began with Project Infinity in w3008, (Comcast Cable vet Dave Watson went into more detail on the company blog.

SEE ALSO: NBC Profits Decline 28 Percent, Driven Down By Film

Will it be a distinction without a difference for Comcast’s subs or the new customers the company want to reach? It’s hard to imagine a year from now that the average cable or ISP sub will be talking about getting Xfinity instead of Comcast. But it could be a way to get prospective subs to take another look.

Roberts on device explosion: Chairman and CEO Brian Roberts announced the underpinnings of what Comcast is calling Xfinity at CES in 2008. Asked about the iPad and other devices during the call, Roberts said he saw parts of the presentation but doesn’t have a lot of specifics. “I think there is an incredible time for innovation going on right now, and I don’t think it has ever been happening faster or more broadly. There’s going to be some hits and there’s going to be some misses.” Comcast’s own product choices with what Roberts’ calls an emphasis on the consumer “sometimes that will be at the expense of other Comcast products and sometimes it’s going to be added of experience.”

He added: “I don’t think people wanting more content on more devices is anything but a good thing for our company.” Offering CES 2010 as an example: “Since then is the tablet, but at that time the two hot products that I liked at CES, one was Google’s new Nexus phone. It was smaller than the iPhone, so a smaller screen was the hot product, and the other hot product was a 152-inch 3-D TV in high def that everybody wanted. So you had these two very different extremes, that the consumer wants something really small and portable, and something really big in the home. And I think we continue to find ways to service, and want to be servicing, those needs.” 

—Comcast Interactive: CIM remains tucked inside “corporate and other” so very little in the way of detail for Q4. The segment was up 14.3 percent to $138 million, “reflecting strong results at CIM and Comcast-Spectacor.” But the same segment included severance costs—and $20 million on NBCU merger costs.

—Ad outlook: Comcast’s execs wouldn’t talk about NBCU results but Burke included the GE unit in a response about the local ad outlook. Echoing sentiment from other companies, Burke says the advertising climate is improving steadily: “What’s interesting to me is how broad the change in ad sentiment is, you know when you talk to NBC or when you talk to the NBC cable channels or our cable programming group or our local ad sales, it seems like the world is getting better. The problem is obviously it’s month to month and we’ll see where it goes from here. But there’s for me no reason not to be optimistic.”

—First Xfinity markets:  XFINITY TV, XFINITY Voice and XFINITY Internet will show up first in some of Comcast’s top markets: Boston, hometown Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington D.C., Chicago, Portland, Seattle, Hartford, Augusta, Chattanooga, parts of the Bay Area and San Francisco. It’s no accident that D.C. and Baltimore are in the mix—Comcast wants regulators thinking about how forward-looking it is, especially while the NBCU merger is being reviewed.

Webcast | Slides | Transcript (via SeekingAlpha)

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