Annual tech trade show CES is underway, and Microsoft’s keynote announced a few new goodies: a new Ultimate Extra for Vista that delivers full-motion desktop backgrounds, interoperability between Xbox Live and Vista, and more interestingly a TV service for the Xbox 360. US launch this summer but other than that there’s sod-all information. Price? International availability? Partners? Your guess is as good as mine.
Meanwhile Apple-watchers are wetting themselves with excitement over the content of Steve Jobs’ keynote tomorrow. Expect more on iTV, lots on Leopard and maybe even the iPod phone. I sincerely hope Jobs *does* announce an iPod phone tomorrow, because the sheer volume of ineptly photoshopped fakes floating around online is beginning to do my head in.
Update:
More on Xbox telly via Eurogamer.net:
IPTV, meanwhile, set to launch at Christmas, will allow you to watch TV on Xbox 360 while chatting to friends, and to play on Xbox Live while recording a TV programme in the background, among other things. Microsoft promises “instant channel zapping, a rich and responsive user interface, video on demand with branded video-on-demand storefronts, digital video recording and high-definition television”.
Its press literature says that commercial and trial deployments are under way with 16 companies, “including five of the world’s largest service providers in 14 countries on four continents”. Those “scale commercial deployments” include ones with BT Group in the UK, Deutsche Telekom in Germany, T-Online in France and Swisscom in Switzerland. AT&T is working with Microsoft in the US.
Comments
0 responses to “Microsoft brings IPTV to Xbox 360, Apple fans’ wait is nearly over”
Since there’s been hee-haw about the movie service in the UK in three months, I wouldn’t hold you breath.
What does annoy me though are the rumours about the HDMI port – that it is additional to the AV out. Microsoft refused say that the 1st gen 360 could not use HDMI through the AV port and this makes it look like it can’t.
Yeah, I’m a bit concerned by Microsoft’s approach to the UK in entertainment things: while the Zune doesn’t appear to be brilliant, it still seems strange that they’ve no plans for the UK (and won’t give UK reviewers one to check out). And I’m not holding my breath about the 360’s movie download service.
HDMI… yeah, it’s pretty clear there’s a v2 360 about to appear.
The 360 v2 annoys me. They always said they’d go to the 65nm process but always said that they would go HDMI when there was demand. They didn’t say you’d have to buy a new console rather then just a new cable!
Yeah, I agree. I sincerely hope they’ll offer HDMI via cable for us poor early adopters.
There is talk at the moment that all of this IPTV may be bollocks. You may need to be with a particular ISP and still need a STB.