IPTV on Xbox 360 is for real
By Peter Rojas 
posted Jan 7th 2007 9:31PM
posted Jan 7th 2007 9:31PM
Yup, as suspected Microsoft is adding IPTV to the Xbox 360. They're way light on details, but during tonight's Microsoft keynote Robbie Bach gave a sneak peek at a new service called IPTV on Xbox 360. Like we guessed, the service will offer live streaming broadcasts, and do stuff like let you play a game on Xbox Live while recording a show in the background. IPTV on Xbox 360 won't be available until the holiday season this year, but they do say that programming will be from providers who are already offering services based on Microsoft TV IPTV Edition. Bach also hinted there will be some social aspects to the service that will "make it easy for people to access and discover their favorite content and share their personal experiences with the communities they are part of." And that's pretty much all we know right now, we probably won't know for months how much the service will cost and whether it'll require a larger drive to work.
Is this from the future? Because I thought the keynote hadn't started yet.
So what about the 120GB and HDMI?
Would someone please explain why I want IPTV? Is there compelling content there? Quality content like Battlestar Galactica?
He really stressed how wonderful IPTV was and how fast it is, but didn't really mention why I would want it or would want to watch it.
So what cable companies or telecom companies are going to carry this IPTV, is what I'm more interested in :)
Hercules, no cable provider suplies it. It's "IP" TV "I"nternet "P"rotocol TV. See the Wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iptv
Add a bigger hard drive, iptv and hdmi and I might be really interested. I love my Nintendo Wii, but wouldn't mind an XBOX360 if it does new features like DVR and such.
This is a way to circumvent cable companies (and sat companies to a lesser extent). Verizon FIOS offers this, so presumably this would work as a replacement set-top for their service. It's potentially exciting but a lot of content needs to be available and not at a crushing price/point. For $50 a month I can watch an awful lot of tv shows from cable... if this charges $1 a month per show, it can get more expensive very quickly.
Actually, several places already have IPTV. Verizon's FIOS system uses IPTV, as does SaskTel's "Max" service in Saskatchewan, along with a few in Europe (Free.fr, HomeChoice and the like).
Actually, Verizon's FIOS TV uses and Fiber based IP network, but it's not IPTV. They use the same IP infrastructure as the Cable companies. It's a more well established protocol to base their system on.
at&t is using IPTV to drive their U-Verse service, however their network is Fiber to the pole, not directly to the premise.
http://news.com.com/Verizons+TV+dreams/2100-1034_3-5894645.html
That said, I'm very interested to see a roster of content currently available on IPTV. So far the only thing I've found that's worth watching is dl.tv (http://dl.tv/)