Attendees at the NCTA Conference in Chicago on Thursday got a glimpse at the future as Comcast CEo Brian Roberts demonstrated some of the fastest broadband speeds and shared the company's next-generation television experience with them. Brian L. Roberts showed the first 1Gbps connection over a production HFC network serving customers by downloading all 23 episodes of Season 5 of "30 Rock" = close to nine hours of content - in about 90 seconds.

Comcast engineers worked with its local Chicago system and teams at Cisco and Ookla to create and deliver this demonstration of the future of broadband.

Today, Comcast offers Internet speeds up to 105 Mbps.

Turning to the TV, Brian also introduced the crowd to Xcalibur, Comcast's next-gen IP video platform. The first of the Xcalibur products is in a market trial in Augusta, Georgia and includes a completely new cloud-based user interface with advanced navigation and access to more content, including select online videos and apps delivered over IP.

Comcast said that its engineers are working with partners like Cisco, Facebook, Pandora Radio, Intel, Pace, INRIX, The Weather Channel, thePlatform and with developers to continually push the envelope to invent applications "that haven't even been imagined yet."