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Xbox 360 getting IPTV?
Is Microsoft getting ready to add IPTV to the Xbox 360? Details are a little hazy at the moment, but apparently Dean Takahashi over at San Jose Mercury News posted and then quickly pulled a post from his blog about how Robbie Bach and Bill Gates were going to announce that the Xbox 360 will soon be able to double as a set-top box for Internet Protocol Television. Sounds like he may have accidentally included some info that wasn't supposed to go up until after the big Gatesnote on Sunday evening. So what would make this IPTV service different from the video download service they just introduced? Well, to be honest we don't know, since we won't know proper details until they're announced (presumably all will be revealed tomorrow), but IPTV generally refers to live and on-demand video that's streamed, rather than downloaded, over an internet connection. Typically that means an experience that's more like traditional TV, with the ability to flip channels and tune into live broadcasts and all that. We do know that Microsoft has been working on IPTV stuff for years now (they already offer a set-top box-based system that's being test marketed by a handful of telcos around the world), so it wouldn't be a shock to see them try and leverage the Xbox 360 as a platform. Right now we're just curious to see how they'd pull it off from a technical standpoint and what networks and/or programming they might be offering.
