Xbox One cuts out the middle man, gets live TV directly with Verizon's FiOS app
The Xbox One is built to blend with its owner's existing TV-watching setup thanks to the HDMI-in, but customers with Verizon FiOS TV can sidestep that entirely. FiOS has launched a version of its app -- already available on the Xbox 360 and mobile devices -- for the Xbox One that promises 74 live channels streamed over the internet. Already announced as part of the first wave of entertainment apps for the Xbox One, Verizon's app makes it the first TV provider to stream live TV directly to the box. TV viewing with the Xbox One is unusually seamless with the passthrough, but with FiOS, it's just another app like Netflix or Hulu Plus, complete with built-in Kinect support for voice and gesture controls.
If your FiOS cable box is already plugged into the Xbox One, it means the two can be used together for picture-alongside-picture with the snap feature, or that you can use the Xbox somewhere in the house without the cable box at all. Features we'd like to see are access to video on-demand, and integrated control/awareness for DVR recordings so we can ditch the remote entirely, and the ability to pin shows directly to the OneGuide, but so far, it's just live TV. The app is live in the Xbox One store but -- at least for now -- it's only useful if you live in a FiOS area and have the service.
