Microsoft's Family Room Change

michael_cain writes "Siliconvalley.com is reporting that Microsoft is shutting down its Ultimate TV project. The service itself will continue to be offered. The set top box hardware developers are moving to the XBox organization. With the sales of the XBox already larger than either Ultimate TV or its predecessor, WebTV, it looks like Microsoft is adopting the game console as their method-of-choice for getting a platform to run their software into the family room." I found the decision to more or less put UltimateTV on life support and discontinue active work on it interesting - that leaves TiVo and ReplayTV as the main standing competitors.

Comments

This is bad for Tivo..

[jordan_a]

With XBox in more living rooms them Tivo, this means that Microsoft has a huge platform to launch from if they extend UltimateTV to the XBox.

Not surprising...

[sdo1]

Despite their previous advantage over TiVo of being able to record 2 shows at once, Ultimate TV never made any headway in the market. It had the following problems from the start...

- It's Microsoft. Despite what they would tell you, I think there's a real stigma with having Microsoft's name attached to something at this point. Despite the reality, to the average Joe it means this thing is going to crash often and not work the way I want it to.

- It's DirecTV only. TiVo has a "standalone" box and that means ANYONE can have TiVo.

It probably doesn't mean anything to TiVo and/or ReplayTV anyway since Ultimate TV never really gave them any competition.

-S

Re:Not surprising...

[b0r1s]

It's Microsoft. Despite what they would tell you, I think there's a real stigma with having Microsoft's name attached to something at this point. Despite the reality, to the average Joe it means this thing is going to crash often and not work the way I want it to.


This is the one thing I dont think most slashdot readers understand fully.

The true "average joe" doesnt think microsoft is bad. They dont leave their computers on for 20 days at a time, and they dont test them hard enough to force them to crash. Some may have noticed a crash or two, but thought very little of it.

I was taking a drive with my girlfriend's father, talking about computers, and I mentioned that I dont run windows ... He sat there with a blank look on his face. He's a smart man, owns a decent computer, but isnt a computer nerd, and doesnt worry about the ins-and-outs of the computer world. To him, microsoft is all there is, and that's fine. They make software that does everything he wants to do. If he needs something for his computer, he goes to microsoft or dell, and gets it from them. That's just how life is.

You may push your computer hard enough to crash windows. I, personally, push mine hard enough to crash freebsd from time to time. That makes us exceptions: most people very rarely crash their windows computers, and look at microsoft as a provider of the computer world. Is this right? Well, I have a hard time aruging that anything open source has produced tops the Office suite, and I've yet to have XP crash on me, so perhaps it's not too far fetched.

I do agree with you that it really means nothing to Tivo and ReplayTV, but saying the stigma of microsoft was it's own downfall seems short sighted: the name microsoft probably meant more along the lines of "hey, I've heard of this company before. that's what's on my computer at work!" than "this shit's gonna crash on me."

Don't assume MS is leaving the market

[Fly]

I found the decision to more or less put UltimateTV on life support and discontinue active work on it interesting - that leaves TiVo and ReplayTV as the main standing competitors.

It appears to me rather that Microsoft is focusing on the product that they think will make money and more quickly give them an advantage for competing with TiVo. XBox has the components it needs to compete with TiVo: good graphics, hard drive, video in/out, and a remote interface to control it.

HomeStation it is then

[humps]

Doesn't this fit right into the vapourware called HomeStation?

XBox (or call it a cheap PC) has a small harddrive, DVD decoding hw, TV out, remote, dsl/cable, lan. Stuff it with a mpeg2 encoding chip, increase the hd to TiVo size, give it a bit more ram. Don't you get a TiVo+game+browsing+DVD all-in-one box? Plus MS is kind enough to subsidise a couple of hundred dollars for each box. I don't even have to think about getting a small PC case with mini-atx mobo and half-apg size vid card with video out for my living room! Regardless how I don't like MS, that could be one hell of a box that I might just buy it so that MS effectively subsidise me!

humps

Re:Obviously this heralds the Xbox 2

[Guppy06]

"It almost certainly means this functionality will be lumped into the Xbox's successor, which is fully in line with everything we've heard about that box so far."

Then they have a problem. XBox has only been on the market now for what, two months? If Xbox 2 hits stores less than a year after the release of the original, then it's going to fall flat on its face. One of the big reasons many have stayed away from Xbox is that they don't want to get on the vicious cycle of upgrades Microsoft is famous for, and releasing a new system less than a year after the old would just justify those fears. At the very least, they'll have many Xbox owners who see the new Xbox 2 come out, and decide to not spend their money and wait for Xbox 4 or 5 to come out before upgrading.

It's too early in the game for Microsoft to even think about competing with themselves in the console market. If they think the same rules for running their OS monopoly can be applied to today's three-way power struggle...