Speech recognition technology is more popular than ever and in the past few months alone, we’ve seen related announcements from Amazon, Apple, and Google.

We launched our industry’s first voice controlled TV remote earlier this year and the response has been terrific. Nearly 1.5 million homes now have one, and we’re distributing about 70,000 new remotes each week. Users are speaking aloud to find titles, channels, actors and actresses as well as to record, tune, fast forward and rewind. Last month alone, there were 20 million voice commands made using our new remote.

We’ve added some fun features too: quoting certain movies gets you to the film just as fast as a title search, Taylor Swift talks back when you search for her songs, and our remote happens to speak perfect Minionese ("Big Boss!" was one of our most popular searches in July).

And today, we’re adding another interactive component in partnership with the Cartoon Network that we think will be especially entertaining for kids.

It turns out that one of our most "voice-searched" titles is Teen Titans Go!, a Cartoon Network fan favorite. Now, just by saying "Hello Beast Boy" or "Boy Wonder" viewers are taken to the show’s homepage on X1 and will hear a special audio greeting from one of the characters. They also can say the names of other Titans like Cyborg, Robin and Raven and hear responses unique to each character.

 

We’re hoping to add even more new functions to our voice remote over time.  Still don’t have one? Get yours for free here – http://www.xfinity.com/voice-remote – and join in on the fun!