Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

MS Launches Video Download Service

Posted by Zonk on from the videos-on-the-dl dept.

renderhead writes "According to ZDNet and many other sources, Microsoft has launched a new video download service for playing back television content on Windows Mobile devices. Partners include CinemaNow, MSNBC.com, and TiVo. According to another article from ployer.com, the service will require Windows XP, Internet Explorer 5 or higher, and Windows Media Player 10 or higher."

11 of 194 comments (clear)

  1. The Mask Comes Off by Doc+Ruby · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Now we see the truth behind all the corporate assurances that MS ownerships in MSNBC, ComCast cable and other media holdings is "just financial investment", or "just funding innovators". This is the beginning of MS leveraging a truly mass market monopoly. Combined with their DRM ubiquity in new DVD players, the MS octopus can now begin to squeeze the entire broadcast industry, and the world that depends on it for information, from its Internet lair.

    --

    --
    make install -not war

    1. Re:The Mask Comes Off by xtracto · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Well, people said the same when Microsoft entered the console market with the X-box... and, to the webmail market... and btw, their webmail is also an "unmitigated disaster" and a lof of people likes it, also X-box is an time bomb, and a lot of people likes it, you see, United States citizens are known from other countries to have a use-and-throw culture so it does not mather that something is shitty as long as there is a new version within next 1 or 2 years, its okey! at the end It is cool to have the last bleeding-edge [your-favorite-tech] it does not mather that your older one works JUST FINE!!.

      --
      Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
    2. Re:The Mask Comes Off by Doc+Ruby · · Score: 1, Interesting

      As Slashdot forms up into rival, overlapping modblock factions...

      The Friend/Foe lists are public, though listed only per-user. I wonder if anyone has a Slashdot spider that shows the association maps. This could get interesting, if noisy.

      --

      --
      make install -not war

  2. Philosophical question by Darth+Hubris · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Technical issues aside, if you could install this on your OS of choice legally, would you?

    --
    The party's over ... the drink ... and the luck ... ran out
  3. I use MythTV by drewzhrodague · · Score: 4, Interesting

    MythTV is great -- plays shows I record, DVDs, and even plays TV shows downloaded from the Internet (via mPlayer, which still blows my mind). KnoppMyth is easy to setup and install, and works with even old misengineered equipment.

    I say this becasue I don't do Windows anymore, and my life is easier for it!

    --
    Zhrodague.net - I do projects and stuff too.
  4. requirements... by peter_gzowski · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Or, I could hop on over to any number of torrent trackers, which require any OS, any bittorrent client, and any media player. The television industry could compete with free, but it seems that they don't want to.

    --
    "Now gluttony and exploitation serves eight!" - TV's Frank
  5. XP and IE5? by sumdumass · · Score: 2, Interesting

    i thought that XP came with IE6. IE5 being a requirement kind of makes you think that it will work on older OS's but they restricted it for some other reason.

    Maybe i'm missing somethign and the windows mobile devices only use IE5 or somehtign. I wonder how long before someone has a hack to let it work with WIN98 or somethign.

  6. TiVo? by AstroDrabb · · Score: 2, Interesting
    The post says:
    Partners include CinemaNow, MSNBC.com, and TiVo
    It then says:
    the service will require Windows XP, Internet Explorer 5 or higher, and Windows Media Player 10 or higher.
    Exactly where does Tivo fit into this? Tivo is Linux based. Does anyone know if Tivo developed a DRM enabled WMP player that runs on Linux?
    --
    If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land,
    it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. -James Madison
  7. requires 4 things I don't have by javaxman · · Score: 1, Interesting

    1) Windows Media Player device 2) Windows XP 3) Windows Media Player 10 4) The desire to pay $19.95 a year for content I can access via TV ( which I already pay way too much for and is much less restrictive in terms of possible uses ) or the internet ( as others have pointed out, some of this content is available online already ). Sure, I could get any and all of the above, but... compared to using my existing setup and a PSP to accomplish basically the same goal ( plus play killer games ), I don't see the benefit, unless you're into supporting Microsoft. It'll be interesting to see how widespread the adoption of this becomes. Oh, also, a prediction: what do you want to bet you'll be able to get at this via the next XBox ? If the next generation XBox can't connect to this service, someone should be fired. Heck, they should be able to roll this out on the current generation XBox- but probably won't because they want folks to buy Media Players and new XBoxes.

  8. A call to MythTV/gstreamer/apache/whoever hackers: by Trelane · · Score: 3, Interesting
    heh.

    While true, it's a very good option for those in geeks' families, and hopefully the Free (not free) bug will spread, especially as all of the steps listed above get easier with time.

    Indeed, there's nothing prohibiting someone from taking mythtv code, shining it up, and selling it as a set-top-box + personal distribution server. In fact, I suspect people would pay TiVo for precisely that, provided they don't get sued out of the water. Or someone could set it up as a LiveCD, like they currently do, for free.... The main catch is the hardware,really, and that's getting better as more and more people adopt Linux. Given that lack of hardware/software support is entirely an intertia problem, and the intertia's changing, there's reason yet to hope for some real service.

    Indeed, if anyone from TiVo or others are listening, I bet people would be quite willing to pay to have remote TiVo interfaces so that they can monitor their TiVo and play shows back and watch them live, via TiVo's servers (for a nominal monthly fee, of course). This sounds kind of like what Microsoft may be doing, but with TiVo being merely a very minor cog in the Great Microsoft Video Wheel.

    Hopefully, we can convince MythTV and others to build separate frontends (not just the full-screen one) so that we can do things like I describe for free (playback, live TV watching, episode download, and remote control of the backends) as I describe. Given MythTV's backend/frontend separation, it seems like a very logical next step. I know I've wanted to watch some TV on my laptop in my office while working on some stuff. It'd be very convenient for, say, gstreamer to incorporate such a mythtv frontend functionality. Maybe someone from Apache could hack together a mod_mythtv....

    --

    --
    Given enough personal experience, all stereotypes are shallow.
  9. MS-slashdot by wardk · · Score: 2, Interesting

    wow, we're seemingly getting multiple MS press releases here on slashdot daily.

    I hope they are paying for all this advertising.

    (or are these subtle pseudo-DOS attacks on MS resources via the slashdot-effect? you guys are crafty)