Microsoft Sees Future in IPTV

linumax writes "It took 12 years and more than $10 billion, but one of Microsoft's biggest dreams may finally be coming true: The company is close to becoming a major player in the television business. This is not about PCs that play video -- the company has done that for years -- but rather a whole new platform for delivering television over the Internet, through software that's mostly invisible to consumers." From the article: "Consumers will see cool new features -- imagine four live pictures on a screen at once -- instant channel changes and more options for on-demand video rentals, including high-definition content. Microsoft TV also merges phone services, so incoming messages, e-mail and caller ID can be displayed on users' television screens. Microsoft hopes its Internet protocol television system (IPTV) will also be used in India, China and other developing countries, where it could provide education and government services as well as entertainment via the television."

Comments

Hmm, I wonder...

[TooMuchEspressoGuy]

I wonder how many commercials MS will add in between shows. If it's the 25+ minutes that is currently the norm on regular TV networks, then I doubt that they will get very many people to sign on.

I know that my money is staying in my pocket until someone introduces commercial-free subscription TV.

Re:Hmm, I wonder...

[krem81]

I know that my money is staying in my pocket until someone introduces commercial-free subscription TV.

Yes, if only someone thought of that...

Re:Hmm, I wonder...

[ackthpt]

I wonder how many commercials MS will add in between shows. If it's the 25+ minutes that is currently the norm on regular TV networks, then I doubt that they will get very many people to sign on.

It's called Subliminal Advertising. Microsoft is good A big hurdle, yet Microsoft is good is the required bandwidth, where cable cable is bad for you and satellite satellite bad for you have bandwidth galore as it's mostly Microsoft is good one way and minimally dependent Bill loves you consumer end hardware.

Besides, it isn't around soon enough Steve will dance for you to show you this.

"Mission accomplished", said President Gargamel

Re:Hmm, I wonder...

[dada21]

They'll keep a 30 minute show to 30 minutes, but real programming will be sped up 1.4x from 22 minutes to 16 minutes, offering them 6 additional minutes of ads. The extra ads will be performed on the TV shows' sets by the actors, to confound the commercial skippers.

"Buy Irish Spring Soap, it even makes me smell good!" Malcolm Reynolds

Re:Hmm, I wonder...

[redheaded_stepchild]

now if you could only get it seperated from the other 80 channels of ad-drowned garbage.

Re:Hmm, I wonder...

[Blue-Footed Boobie]

I always wondered...

It makes sense for Radio to have commercials - it is free and they need a way to support (and make a profit) themselves.

However, both Cable and Sat. television are NOT free (and are actually quite expensive depending on the provider) but they still have commercials. Now, I understand that television programs (or Video, rather) is much more costly to make. With shows like LOST/24/Alias/etc having larger and larger budgets (and sometimes the quality of the show reflects that *cough*24*cough*), I get that it costs more. But still, the revenue generated by commercials is stupendous! Add in what us consumers pay for the privilege (Ha!) to receive Cable/Sat. - and it seems like the providers are really double-dipping.

I'm not calling for 100% free television, but something has to give. Either cut the commericals way back or bring the prices back down to sane levels. Sadly, neither is likely.

Re:Hmm, I wonder...

[malfunct]

The cost you pay to the cable or satellite company pays for the infrastructure to get the signal from them to you. It doesn't cover much if any of the cost to create the content. Without ads even cabel or satellite tv would either go away or be far more costly.

Re:Hmm, I wonder...

[__aaxpkq8573]

I'm thinking the entire screen will be a continuously running add with 4 smaller size channels showing in each corner. MS will use Avalon technology from upcoming Vista and make the channels see through. You can still see the shows but the add in the background will also be visible.

Yep. I would be all over that.

Re:Hmm, I wonder...

[rtb61]

Then you can add to that a licence fee to microsoft for every device ,every program and every user. Yeah like I'm sure that is going to happen. This is just another buy microsft stock story coming out of seattle (theres a suprise).

Seriously, like microsoft's software is necessary for this to happen or the current media distributors are going to be willing to pay licence fees to microsoft to do this (to the tune of billions of dollars annually), rather than keep that money themselves.

The software for IP television or pay per view etc. will either be proprietary to each major media distributor or open source (either they pay the complete cost once for the own solution most likely a portion of what the annual licence fee to microsoft would be once it was main stream or contribute a tiny percentage of that to create open source solution which they can individually brand to create their own "look" without asking for permission first).

Any one trying to make the claim the end user will pay the M$ licencing costs, does not understand that media distributors charge the maximum amount possible for their content to create the best possible return and anything that gets added to it comes out of their own profit margin every time.

One week microsoft are a software company, then they are a computer console company, then they are an IP company (whatever that means), then they are a computer services company and now they are a media company (without a content library, thats a first). Talk about multiple personality syndrome, why don't they just cut to the chase with adds like "Please, please buy our stock".

Re:Hmm, I wonder...

[Feanturi]

You're not paying for the shows when you pay your cable bill, the channels that have commercials midway through the shows are not covered by what you pay. You're paying for the cable company to maintain all that wire, and collect feeds to modulate into a set of channels. You're paying so they can have service techs available to come out and fix things up when there's a problem. And then there's all the digital technology now, which required upgrades to the cable system so the higher frequency signals can be used without breaking up all the time.

Re:Hmm, I wonder...

[mikael]

Between shows? Why else would they want to be able to play four video streams simultaneously?

My attempt at a +5 funny..

[digital-madman]

Obscure Referance Alert

"...except in Nebraska!"

-Digital Madman

Re:My attempt at a +5 funny..

[KodeK]

For those of you who don't get it:

here

- or -

here

Re:My attempt at a +5 funny..

[boomgopher]

For those of you who don't get it:

If anyone wonders where that came from, it because many telephone marketers used to be located in Nebraska, and hence had different rules for local purchases.

and...

If anyone wonders why Nebraska? It's because is was/is the home to Strategic Air Command, and thus had the best telecommunication infrastructure around for a long time...

The MSterious Future

[dada21]

IPTV is the needed "invention" to roll faster connections for less money. IPTV can offer a variable payment method - subscription (show, channel or all channels), pay per view, or ads. IPTV can bring low budget vids to a wide audience, and it can tell advertisers, content creaters and others who is really watching their shows.

But will government, cable distributors and Hollywood allow it? I already foresee the "monopoly monopoly!" posts, but I think only a few big players could start the ball rolling.

I am very interested in seeing what MS can do to overcome bandwidth concerns at the backbone, ISP and user level (TFA only eludes to it).

IPTV could destroy Tivo, Comcast and Fox if the content is broadcast quality or better. I fear blog production quality, though.

Will this eventually be a separately managed "Internet" bridged at the DSLAM or ISP level? Will MS involve enough big players to keep regulators off their back? Will it run Linux? Err...

Then again, it could be a WebTV failure as well.

We need to stop separating media into cable, POTS, cell, radio, Internet, etc. Its all just packets and it needs massive cohesion in order to be truly at-will. Use all that bandwidth for AnyPacket services and bandwidth will skyrocket while prices will plummet. Why is MS forced to chase landlines? Overregulation.

Funny though that MS is digging their own grave. IPTV = more bandwidth = more client-server software implementation.

I can't wait for the future.

Re:The MSterious Future

[Wesley Felter]

But will government, cable distributors and Hollywood allow it?

Verizon and SBC have been having some problems licensing TV channels, but they'll probably just spend their way through the problem. There are also local franchise problems that are being slowly solved in various legislatures.

I am very interested in seeing what MS can do to overcome bandwidth concerns at the backbone, ISP and user level

You can't fix this problem in software. SBC is using VDSL over the last mile and the video will all be flowing over their own network (aka "walled garden"). IP multicast cuts down on the backbone traffic a lot.

IPTV could destroy Tivo, Comcast and Fox if the content is broadcast quality or better.

It is broadcast quality, but for the forseeable future you'll only be able to get IPTV from your last-mile broadband provider. Obviously cable companies have no need for IPTV, so that leaves the telcos. Telcos are just starting to roll out broadband networks that have enough capacity for IPTV (VDSL/FTTH). TiVo is an equipment/software provider, so they can survive in an IPTV world by making IPTV boxes instead of cable boxes. Fox is a content company, so IPTV will just be another distribution channel for their content.

Re:The MSterious Future

[sdpinpdx]

I am very interested in seeing what MS can do to overcome bandwidth concerns at the backbone, ISP and user level (TFA only eludes to it).

If anyone could push wide deployment of IP Multicast, it would be MSFT. Then again that would level the IPTV playing field somewhat, which is not the MSFT way.

Re:The MSterious Future

[Wesley Felter]

If anyone could push wide deployment of IP Multicast, it would be MSFT.

I doubt it. MS has been pushing IPv6 for years, and where is it?

Then again that would level the IPTV playing field somewhat, which is not the MSFT way.

Exactly. The MS IPTV business model does not involve sending anything over the Internet; all the video stays within each ISP's network. Thus no changes to the Internet backbone are needed.

Re:The MSterious Future

[dada21]

Verizon and SBC have been having some problems licensing TV channels, but they'll probably just spend their way through the problem. There are also local franchise problems that are being slowly solved in various legislatures. Both over-regulation consequences.

IP multicast cuts down on the backbone traffic a lot. Maybe, but true IPTV would be on-demand rather than scheduled, IMO. Of course, if the back-end is closed and licensed, its doomed to fail. iTunes picks RSS feeds for podcasting from anyone, but IPTV will likely give us "what we don't want, when we don't want it."

TiVo is an equipment/software provider, so they can survive in an IPTV world by making IPTV boxes instead of cable boxes. Fox is a content company, so IPTV will just be another distribution channel for their content. Only if its scheduled, not on-demand, and only if its a closed backend to only be used by big media corporations.

Re:The MSterious Future

[dada21]

The MS IPTV business model does not involve sending anything over the Internet; all the video stays within each ISP's network. Thus no changes to the Internet backbone are needed. /i> Which is why this is doomed to fail amongst the ever-growing geek and neogeek crowd.

This crowd wants both big media shows and RSS-fed indymedia shows. They want it when they need it, not when Nielson says it should be show. They want it funny/interesting/insightful 52 weeks a year, not just 4 weeks of sweeps and troll the other 48.

Information will combine better through Google rather than MS. I am so close to not separating my TV/radio/net/Phone data, but I'm just waiting for the Next Big Thing to combine it for me.

I doubt MS' IPTV will be it.

Re:The MSterious Future

[Xrathie]

There has been tons of bandwidth on LANs for years and people have not been going back to dumb terminals and mainframes ...those days are dead ...DEAD.

Re:The MSterious Future

[r_cerq]

Maybe, but true IPTV would be on-demand rather than scheduled, IMO. Of course, if the back-end is closed and licensed, its doomed to fail. iTunes picks RSS feeds for podcasting from anyone, but IPTV will likely give us "what we don't want, when we don't want it."
You're limiting IPTV to VoD or time-shifted TV, and that's not what it's about. Think "cable operator with real-time interactive features". IPTV is not _just_ a consumer-oriented tech, it's a way for telcos to compete with cable operators and pay for the high-bandwidth last-mile links customers want nowadays. (the ARPU in TV services is MUCH higher than Internet or voice)

You'll get the god-knows-how-many broadcast channels as before, and those, being real-time, can and will use multicast, so each individual channel will only go once through the backbone. For timeshifted TV (think TiVO's "pause"), you can just have an HDD on the STB. Video-on-Demand, however, _Will_ take it's toll on the operator's network, as each customer's video-feed will be unique to that customer.

And now, to go back to the original article, I've seen MS's platform in exhibits throughout the year. It's gorgeous, but it's expensive as hell (the STBs require a massive amount of capacity to do their nifty little features. While most middleware vendors make do with small PPC CPU's in the 200-400 Mhz range, MS's solution needs at least a 700MHz Celeron. The investment per customer goes through the roof) they're hardly a big contender in that area (although they're growing). They (still?) have a sizeable and healthy number of competitors.

Re:The MSterious Future

[NatteringNabob]

[IPTV is the needed "invention" to roll faster connections for less money. IPTV can offer a variable payment method - subscription (show, channel or all channels), pay per view, or ad]

IPTV is nothing new. I can already get video on demand from Comcast, as well as Internet and phone service if I wanted it, and I don't need Microsoft for any of it. The video-on-demand is OK for the free movies, but I wouldn't pay for it as the quality is poor and there is too much artifacting, and IPTV will do nothing to solve that. The bigger problem is that there simply isn't all that much content that is worth watching, let alone paying for, and 'sneaker net', aka, a trip to your local video store, still has much higher bandwidth than you are likely to have either via broadcast or landlines. Using sneaker net, I get about 9MB (that's Bytes)/sec for video, more if I rent more than 2 movies at a time. The internet is good for non-realtime video, and low bandwidth news clips, and that's about it.

Regulation has nothing to do with it either. There is a finite amount of bandwidth available at a price people are willing to pay. Better compression and transmission technology will continue to help, but that will happen with or without MS IPTV which is really totally irrelevant.

Re:The MSterious Future

[dada21]

Regulation has nothing to do with it either. There is a finite amount of bandwidth available at a price people are willing to pay.

But how much wired bandwidth could be added if more providers could run connections? Overregulation prevents that.

How much wireless bandwidth goes unused any given moment? Look at the entire spectrum and see the waste of separating it, regulating it into TV, radio, wifi, GSM, etc.

Analog wireless is dying. Combine the bandwidth into a large pool. Maximize the use of it all.

Regulations are restricting prices and bandwidth, thereby restricting information.

Re:The MSterious Future

[Anonymous Coward]

IPTV is not going to usher in a new era of super-high-speed consumer internet connections or kill the cable companies, because every ISP is doing everything it can to separate IPTV from the real Internet so they can sell it as a premium service. IPTV will be a subscription service from the cable and phone companies, and instead of increasing their general Internet service speeds to carry IPTV traffic they will sell you a crippled line with 90% of its capacity reserved for their IPTV (whether or not you subscribe) and 10% left for every other Internet service (perhaps even with special traffic throttling to make streaming video from the Internet even slower so you're forced to subscribe to their IPTV).

Re:The MSterious Future

[farnz]

Video-on-Demand, however, _Will_ take it's toll on the operator's network, as each customer's video-feed will be unique to that customer.

I'm sure you're already aware of this, but assuming each customer's STB has its own local storage (HDD probably, or lots of RAM), you could exploit that to reduce your bandwidth requirements, by minimising the time customers spend on their own VoD feeds. Given (bad numbers for sake of example follow) some disk for VOD caching (call it 30 minutes of video), you can have a multicast feed running once every 15 minutes - this means eight possible feeds for a 2 hour event - which all customers of a particular event can use. When a customer joins or leaves a feed, they only need a burst to catch them up with 15 minutes (at most) of video. Further, because your cache covers two overlapping multicast feeds, a customer who pauses or rewinds simply switches from feed to feed so that their local cache is kept full; fast forward is still painful (although even then, there are tricks you can pull to keep you mostly on the multicast feeds), but you've saved lots of backbone bandwidth for the common cases of "sit and watch without interruption" and "sit and watch, pausing when interrupted".

Re:The MSterious Future

[NatteringNabob]

[ But how much wired bandwidth could be added if more providers could run connections? Overregulation prevents that ]

Sadly, no. Cost, physics and Shannon's Law prevent that.

Re:The MSterious Future

[Anonymous Coward]

IP multicast cuts down on the backbone traffic a lot.

It is very disappointing that you can't use IP multicast now in normal applications running over the public Internet. With multicast over the public Internet it would be possible to do IPTV without requiring explicit support at the ISP level. You could choose an IPTV provider separate from your ISP, competition would flourish, you could even run your own TV station from your home connection if you wanted. And I'll bet BitTorrent could be made much more efficient. Why is it that you can't do all this today? And will IPv6 fix all this with its required multicast support?

Re:The MSterious Future

[Anonymous Coward]

I am very interested in seeing what MS can do to overcome bandwidth concerns at the backbone, ISP and user level (TFA only eludes to it).
Well, they could start by implementing a fully-functional IP stack. That includes both multi-cast, QoS and following the RFCs to the letter (something which is aparently beyond MicosSoft's compulsion to turn everything into shit).
IPTV could destroy Tivo, Comcast and Fox if the content is broadcast quality or better. I fear blog production quality, though.
Do fear it. After all MS's mainstay is the lowest common denominator. Expect BigBrother-on-demand.
Will this eventually be a separately managed "Internet" bridged at the DSLAM or ISP level? Will MS involve enough big players to keep regulators off their back? Will it run Linux? Err...
Well, since there is no DRM in linux they have the perfect excuse. OTOH, given MS's profile, I expect their unbeatable DRM to be fully cracked and ported to linux in less than an year.
We need to stop separating media into cable, POTS, cell, radio, Internet, etc. Its all just packets and it needs massive cohesion in order to be truly at-will.
Still waiting for truly functional QoS across the board, so that you can carry VOIP, and webtv on the same circuit of the user's internet service.
And can you immagine the clamour when a couple of 911 class preempt the porn channel's bandwidth?
Funny though that MS is digging their own grave.
I'll drink to that.

Re:The MSterious Future

[Wesley Felter]

It is very disappointing that you can't use IP multicast now in normal applications running over the public Internet.

Indeed.

Why is it that you can't do all this today?

Every multicast group creates a routing table entry in every router that it passes through. If anyone could create multicast groups, backbone routers would have to handle millions of new routing table entries, and that RAM isn't free.

And will IPv6 fix all this with its required multicast support?

IPv6 cannot require anything, because the IETF has no way to enforce such requirements. So multicast and IPSec may be "mandatory to implement", but nobody can force anybody to turn them on.

Re:The MSterious Future

[forcei]

Disclaimer: I work for a small rural telco who is rolling out IPTV in a few weeks. My responses are based on my personal experience.

"But will government, cable distributors and Hollywood allow it?"

I don't envy my manager and the VP who have had to negotiate the contracts with the content producers. When they see the letters IP behind TV, they immediately think, "OMG our content will go on the int0rnet!!!!!!!!111" As it stands right now content producers make it much more difficult for IPTV companies to carry their content than cable companies by making us prove the security of our infrustructure and put encryption in place before they'll sign the dotted line.

As far as local government, the city stands behind the competition that it will foster. Besides, if a cable company can offer VoIP, why can't we offer IPTV?

I am very interested in seeing what MS can do to overcome bandwidth concerns at the backbone, ISP and user level (TFA only eludes to it).

Depending on Microsoft's exact strategy, they might not even really care about bandwidth. Chances are they'd be the middleware and user interface, not the transport.

As things are with IPTV now, you get your MPEG off the satellite and local channels off-air, shape/encode them at a specific and constant rate, then ship them out multicast across your transport. Multicast has the advantage in that it only takes up the bandwidth for a specific stream once; you just tell your transport that you want to begin listening to it. (Think analog tuning for digital streams)

As far as last mile bandwidth is concerned, we're going to be deploying with ADSL2+ which goes up to 24Mb, with VDSL2 just around the corner, which will probably go up to around 40-50Mb in the real world.

Will this eventually be a separately managed "Internet" bridged at the DSLAM or ISP level?

We're going to be offering the triple play: voice, video and data, and it will all come over the same port on our DSLAMs.

We looked in to WebTV like features when we were first getting started, but it's just too lame right now to actually give it to people. We will, however, use a walled garden concept of WebTV; just a few pre-defined buttons that show you webpages that have the weather, local news, etc.

Will it run Linux? Err...

Our set tops do. There's something especially cool about being able to ssh in to your TV. :-)


IPTV is still totally bleeding edge. There's a lot of companies out there, but none of them really know how to work together, and the integration definitely lacks elegance in some areas. Heck, according to our vendors, our little company is the first in the nation to get our combination of hardware with the latest'n'greatest software up and running.

Re:The MSterious Future

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for the answers. I have also heard that there are disputes among ISPs about how to charge for multicast traffic; I don't know how much that is also a factor. I suppose it's too much to hope for that multicast will be supported across the public Internet at any point in the forseeable future. If only it had been implemented earlier, it might have made it into the early Internet and become a de facto expected part of IP, and the Internet would be a better place today.

Re:The MSterious Future

[hummer357]

This discussion is not really to the point, is it? Bandwidth is NOT a big issue, it's just a logistics problem, even for HD. What's a few fibres here and there when you have bigger issues?
Also, IPTV does not necessarily mean 'over the internet', certainly not in the short term because QoS is too important: you can't have a consumer television product which can stall frequently due to buffer underruns.

(My job is running an IPTV-over-dsl service, so I have quite some experience in this field)

We've been running our platform since eary last year, and has been running comercially since before this summer. Everything is stable, and we're NOT using anything MS.

If course, their offering has been evaluated, but our choice was based on these:
- stability of everything (all of our systems are linux or solaris, or 'black boxes')
- openness of video platform (no wmv9, just mpeg. we like to choose our own encoder vendor)
- openness of it platform (oracle db's, java backends, etc...)
- customizability (for integration with our provisioning and billing systems)
- interoperability (all our set-top boxes are running linux internally, vendors don't need to pay expensive fees to get access to the software, which gives more freedom.)
- standard protocols/encoding (mpeg, rtsp, etc...)

MS's offering wasn't selected because of problems with most of the above. Ask Alcatel how their collaboration with them is going.

Most of the platform useUnfortunately, we do have some vendor lock-in because you have to get an encryption system that hollywood and the tv channels trust. It's either that or you don't get any content at all.

More about the article:
* Instant channel changes -> impossible without ugly hacks. you can actually cache the I-frames of unjoined streams, but that's like throwing bandwith away.
* IPTV is not at 'experience'. It's just like watching plain regular tv. Really. You have some interactivity, but nothing more than video-on-demand, pay-per-view, or some user interaction with tv shows. (But hey, old-school phone voting was 'interactive' too). All other services, like phoning, email or surfing work better on other devices.
* Services launching a few years in the future? We're live right now. I don't think people want to wait for the Longhorn of television.

h357

Re:The MSterious Future

[harl]

From a Charter VP I once had for a regular when I was bartending.

subscription (show, channel or all channels)
Except that channel line up is controlled by the content providers in the contracts. Oh you don't have 80% penetration on ESPN. This is why ESPN comes will all cable packages. That's a million a day you owe us. Oh you want MTV? If you want MTV you also have to buy this shopping channel we own. You want MTV don't you. You want CNN only? Sorry you have to purchase all the Turner networks or none of them.

The cable companies just pass the cost along to the comsumer. They point the finger at the content providers in private. In public they tout how many channels they have as a reason for raising rates.

In other news they also thought they could charge what ever they wanted for PPV porn. It turns out they started loosing money at around $18 a movie so they had to drop the price back down a bit.

Re:The MSterious Future

[BVis]

Oh noes! The Big Bad Liberal Elite is keeping the poor multibillion-dollar communications companies from regulating themselves!

Put down your talking points and wake up. Sure, the FCC could throw all its existing regulations out the window in the name of "free trade" and allow the market to regulate itself. Problem is, even the big communications companies (comcast, verizon, et al) can't even keep the billing straight, and without an outside regulator setting standards, soon you'll have to buy a Comcast TV to watch Comcast Cable and then buy a Verizon phone to talk over a Verizon line, because nothing else will work Oh, and did we mention that the hardware just became 3 times as expensive because you don't have an alternative, and you have to buy a new tv/phone/computer/wifi card/etc every 6 months because they changed the "standard" (read: didn't think you'd given them enough money)?

Regulation keeps the playing field level for new companies, by providing standards that all the players have to conform to. Competition is good for consumers (both residential and commercial), corporate greed-fueled anarchy is not. I'm actually in favor of small efficient government, but there are certian things that only a central authority can do, and this is one of them.

Re:The MSterious Future

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, the added cost of upgrading that $5 CPU to a $10 CPU will doom the project.

Given what a shitpile Comcast On-Demand is

[Neil Blender]

(for which Microsoft wrote the software), I wouldn't give it much hope.

Re:Given what a shitpile Comcast On-Demand is

[DigitlDud]

No, its unlikely your Comcast cable is running on MS software. Comcast isn't running it widespread yet. Microsoft set-top boxes were made available in the Seattle area as a seperate service from regular digital/on-demand. Microsoft's actually solves a lot of the problems with current services such as channel load times.

Re:Given what a shitpile Comcast On-Demand is

[Neil Blender]

Well, I live in Seattle and on the on demand screen it says "powered by microsoft" and it is pretty buggy. I'll admit it has gotten a bit better, but it is still buggy.

Re:Slashdot Censors Dissenting Views

[TooMuchEspressoGuy]

Maybe they banned your account because... oh, I don't know... you post long, off-topic rants on how everyone is out to get you and how you're being repressed by the Evil Slashdot Hive-Mind?

...nah, that can't be it...

4 pictures at once???

[Roadkills-R-Us]

Good grief. How many people evn use Picture in picture?
I get called foure eyes a lot, but even I have a hard time
following two screens at once, much less four.

Re:4 pictures at once???

[LifesABeach]

Yes, for me one outstanding application is Baseball. One could have All the games on at one time and not miss any of the action.

Re:4 pictures at once???

[Anonymous Coward]

Two digicams and an open-minded girlfriend are what pic-in-pic was made for. Clearly you are a basement dweller.

Re:4 pictures at once???

[Anonymous Coward]

i have 5-8 monitors/tv's in a circle around me, project (when not dead) one of which is a super wide screen multimonitor setup
i often use pip.

and if this doesn't blow your mind. i often pip inside a pip.
computer monitor to tv and tv inside tv switching channels.

yee simple minded folk.

Re:4 pictures at once???

[SoloFlyer2]

Welcome to slashdot... you must be new here :)

Re:4 pictures at once???

[CmdrGravy]

Only 8 ? I am sitting here surrounded by 16 super duper wide screen mega monitor TV's most of which surround me in a circle and the rest of which are suspended from a gantry above my viewing position and underneath the diamond crystal super adamantine clear vu floor enclosure.

I have hacked up my chair to enable me to change channels and rotate the viewing platorm simply by thinking about it, quite easy to do in Linux I found.

On my left eye I have the thought controlled super precision telescopic monocular to enable me to view the pip within pip within pip within pip within pip I utilise on roughly 65.3244 % of my viewing stations and on my right eye I use the pseudo stereoscopic transparent video monocle to provide real time video overlays to simualte alternate environments or to watch UK Gold.

I thought most people on here would have a similar setup but I guess it's becoming obvious no one can match my superior skills.

for the love of $diety...

[Rodness]

it's yet another area in which Microsoft can expand their monopoly...
I wish they'd focus on getting even just one thing RIGHT before they
worry about tying TEN things together.

what's next, the Microsoft Toaster/Fridge/Dishwasher/Hair dryer combo?

Re:for the love of $diety...

[The_Quinn]

it's yet another area in which Microsoft can expand their monopoly... I wish they'd focus on getting even just one thing RIGHT before they worry about tying TEN things together.

If dollars are votes, then you are NOT in the majority in your opinion.

Re-boot your TV in the middle of a Game?

[RoterheadPro]

One thing about regular plain ol' TVs. They work. My Comcast DVR has so many problems that I have replaced it once (bad file links on the recordings). Many hangs, reboots etc.

This may be an interesting play toy for awhile, that will be about it. A friend just turned in his Vonage system as there were way too many problems for it to be a reliable phone system.

pointless?

[tehwebguy]

to me this seems like such a waste. the few features mentioned sound like crap or not new. for instance the article says "imagine four live pictures on the screen at once" -- why would i want to watch 4 at once? anyway, picture in picture (you know, that button that says PIP that nobody uses) has been around since the dark ages. the other features mentioned are already available one way or another or are pointless.

Re:pointless?

[Anonymous Coward]

why would I want to watch 4 at once?

Do you ever have 4 apps open at once?

Right now on my dual screens I am focused on this window (1), but i am keeping mental track of:
(2) My IM window (did someone new sign on? did they send me a message?)
(3) My email window (did i get a response to my last email yet?)
(4) My Napster playlist (what song is playing? what song is coming up?)

Re:pointless?

[Anonymous Coward]

How about on-demand movie playing. Sure some provides already do that (Germany's Premiere), but you have to buy into their expensive hardware and subscription. You didn't see yesterday's game? Just browse through this menu and select it for 8 this evening. Jesus, how about renting movies through you television? There are a lot of possibilities and the technology is out there, let's just hope TV provides will use them.

btw, at this year's PDC some lady showed how you can set a show for recording at 6am through your GSM.

Re:pointless?

[IWannaBeAnAC]

That is a completely different situation. In fact you have one primary window, and the remainder are there only in the background, to be checked if you notice some movement in your preiphial vision, or you get curious as to which song is coming up next.

An analagous situation involving a TV would be:

You are watching a movie on the TV (1)
You have a phone nearby, so you will hear it if someone rings (2)
The radio is playing softly in the background, so you can hear for the next news broadcast (3)
Occasionally you glance out the window to see if the mail has come (4)

Now, trying to read a book and watch TV is distracting enough (and I would argue, impossible to do both properly at the same time), but even watching 2 TV's, unless it was something trivial, like two different angles of the same sporting match or something like that, is surely futile?

Re:pointless?

[redheaded_stepchild]

But what about people that NEED four channels of hard core porn at once? Hell, I'm pissed it's not 8!

Sure

[Overly Critical Guy]

With PC sales slowing as the market saturates, Microsoft is salivating over the potential of faster-growing areas such as television and mobile phones.

Salivating? More like clawing desperately at taking over the living room. They already failed with WMA thanks to iPod.

All Apple has to do is release a video-based iPod, and it's bye-bye Windows in the living room as well--to be more specific, WMV (VC-1) will be dead along with H.264, which is already the primary codec for Blu-ray movies (Sony is already threatening X-Box 360's streaming movie capabilities thanks to Blue-ray, thereby making X-Box 360 useless since it has no Blu-ray or HD-DVD drive).

I'm sorry, the features sound cool, but a lot of Microsoft tech gadgets have come and gone that sounded cool on the surface but just didn't provide the right interface or were too cumbersome. As usual, I'll wait and see (and hope Apple does something to actually legitimize it).

Re:Sure

[grazzy]

'scuse me, how did the iPod do anything to harm a VIDEO-format? All the iPod did was to inflate the price fo the standard mp3-player. And get alot of people robbed off the iPod becuase their unique design.

Apple legitimize? You're talking about the company that tried to force all their customers into using a single button mouse. You'll be kept waiting for a long time d00d. :)

Ps. http://www.mac-sucks.com/

Re:Sure

[interiot]

They already failed with WMA thanks to iPod.

Well, there's another iPod announcement tommorow... Apple could have video wrapped up by then too.

Re:Sure

[Anonymous Coward]

All Apple has to do is release a video-based iPod, and it's bye-bye Windows in the living room as well...

Yes, because nothing sounds better than watching video on your iPod when enjoying the comfort of your living room.

Re:Sure

[Overly Critical Guy]

'scuse me, how did the iPod do anything to harm a VIDEO-format?

Beats me. I never said it did. I said an iPod video would kill WMV like the normal iPod has killed WMA. Reading comprehension...it's a good thing.

All the iPod did was to inflate the price fo the standard mp3-player. And get alot of people robbed off the iPod becuase their unique design.

Yeah, that's "all" it did. And all the Apple II did was legitimize the home personal computer.

Apple legitimize?

Yes, just like they did with the iTunes Music Store, which now has greater than 80% of the market.

You're talking about the company that tried to force all their customers into using a single button mouse.

Force? I was using multiple-buttoned mice in 1998.

Next.

Re:Sure

[Overly Critical Guy]

Especially when you can plug it into any television or monitor and enjoy the comfort of any living room you happen to be in.

Re:Sure

[QuietLagoon]

I'm sorry, the features sound cool, but a lot of Microsoft tech gadgets have come and gone that sounded cool on the surface but just didn't provide the right interface or were too cumbersome.

Microsoft's software always sounds good before it is actually released. We should check with some people who have already tried to use Microsoft's IPTV offerings.

Re:Sure

[Xrathie]

I dont know a single person that has an iPod nor anyone that would pay that rediculous price for one. Blue Ray is a DVD not a steaming technology and it cant be ripped which makes it useless to all but the console world. XBOX 360 is just the gateway... the USB2.0s on it is the killer ) ...but that will all become much clearer next christmas >-)

Re:Sure

[molnarcs]

"WMV (VC-1) will be dead along with H.264, which is already the primary codec for Blu-ray movies (Sony is already threatening X-Box 360's streaming movie capabilities thanks to Blue-ray, thereby making X-Box 360 useless since it has no Blu-ray or HD-DVD drive)."

I always see this kind of stuff recurring here on ./ about H.264. H.264 is not tied to blue-ray, hddvd or anything. It is a codec. You can put h.264 encoded movies on anything you want. I also think that video encoding is one of the few areas where competition works the right way: usually the best implementation wins (Now 50% or more of movies on various p2p networks uses XVID, the rest varies between divx, ffmpeg, the occasional wmv, etc.). To be more specific, h.264 is a new standard, just like mpeg-4 was (actually, h.264 is mpeg-4 part 10). There were various implementations of the mpeg-4 standard: opendivx, which went closed source with divx 4 and began to suck, so most still used divx 3 until xvid matured, and divx begin to suck less (but it still sucks at 6.0 compared to free alternatives). The same way, there are various implentations of h.264, one of which is GPL (x264), another one is developed by NERO (and it is one of the best), and yet another one is developed by APPLE (which sucks the most, because it lacks most of the features that make h.264 the best codec around). So h.264 is not going anywhere - it is the most advanced video codec in existence (you can achieve the same quality as with mpeg-4 spending 10-15% less bits!).

Re:Sure

[badriram]

let me know when the free quicktime can master fullscreen in windows.

Re:Sure

[idsofmarch]

Are you retarded? Except for the note about the iPod not harming a video format, which was just pedantic, how did the iPod inflate the price for the standard Mp3 player? And, people getting robbed because of a unique design indicates that the design is desired and therefore a good thing, even if this particular aspect is negative.

As for forcing the single button mouse, wtf? Macs have been able to use multi-button mice for years, there was no forcing. You could say that in some loppy logic it was true if only single-button mice worked. Furthermore, you could just reverse the idea and demand that Microsoft stop making people use two-button mice. It was a design decision, one many disagreed with, but nonetheless it was an idea that multi-button mice were a kludge created by bad-UI design.

Re:Sure

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.videolan.org/

Re:Sure

[Anonymous Coward]

let me know when the free quicktime can master fullscreen in windows.

Ok. I'm letting you know: QuickTime can do fullscreen.

Maybe if you're nice I'll actually tell you how to do it.

Re:Sure

[dr.badass]

"Is it just me or has slashdot turned extra hostile the last couple of months? The trolls seems to be wakening from the winter-sleep or something..."

Re:Sure

[dr.badass]

WMV (VC-1) will be dead along with H.264, which is already the primary codec for Blu-ray movies

I think you might be a little confused here. For one, both VC-1 and H.264 are usable for Blu-Ray movies, along with MPEG-2. Also, these three are also the codecs for HD-DVD. Any Blu-Ray or HD-DVD player will be able to play back all three, so neither codec can really "kill" the other.

Re:Sure

[jZnat]

I think the fact that WMA and WMV are butchered versions of an existing standard set by MPEG that are also proprietary kinda killed it. If WMA/WMV were open standards, they would be successful, especially with a large company like Microsoft or Apple behind the format. In fact, this is both of their problem's most of the time; instead of using or improving on an existing open format, they try to reinvent the wheel, fuck it up, and not tell anyone what they changed or did so that only WMP can play those high quality porn movies you get from pay sites. :/

Re:Sure

[jZnat]

how did the iPod inflate the price for the standard Mp3 player?

They charged $300 for a device that should only cost ~$150 with the featureset and capacity that it comes with. A sleek design should not cost me $100-200 extra, especially when it lacks all the necessary features of a portable jukebox.

Re:Sure

[jZnat]

H.264 is fucking patented, that's why we bitch about it. A standard is patented. A STANDARD is fucking PATENTED. What kind of bullshit is that? If you're going to make a standard, especially an ISO-certified (and IEC in this case) one, then you should really be giving up all "rights" to owning the "standard" so that people can, oh, use it? Sure, patent your method of using the standard all you want; nobody gives a damn as you'll spend more time making the patent than, oh, ffmpeg will spend programming an implementation of the published standard, sorta invalidating your patent based on prior art.

This is why the MPEG is utter bullshit; if things like Unicode or ANSI C were patented, where the hell would we be now?

Re:Sure

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.free-codecs.com/download/QuickTime_Alte rnative.htm

Re:Sure

[HuguesT]

OK, where can I find a basic new 20GB mp3 player for $150 ?

They're all over $200 wherever I've looked.

Re:Sure

[grazzy]

Mainly I am (was) referering to comments like this: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=165006&cid=137 70032.

I see no reason I should have to put up with comments like that even if I happen to disagree with the common attitude on slashdot that apple is some kind of über-company .. or that google is.

Re:Sure

[ianpm]

They already failed with WMA thanks to iPod.

Except that all the other music stores in the world that aren't iTMS are using WMA. With the exception of Real, who are using AAC. Although God knows why, given that Apple are too monopolistic to allow them access to the iPod hardware.

Face it, Apple are just as keen to lock their customers into one format and store as Microsoft are. The difference is of course, with Microsoft you get to choose the hardware you want, and aren't stuck with that ueless monolyth of tacky white plastic know as the iPod.

Re:Sure

[molnarcs]

So, dont rail about the software, rail about patents - that is an entirely different matter. Basically, you cant write anything more complex than Hello World, without violating one software patent or another. Im absolutely against selectively disregarding patented code, just because the patent is more visible. If you look at the usual pattern of patent lawsuit, a small company that we never heard of comes up with ridiculous claims and sues $Big_company for money.

Besides, mp3 is patented (and no one stops using it), mpeg-4 is patented (much in the same way as h.264) and we use XVID, FFMPEG/LIBAVCODEC (and divix! - they dont own the patents actually) - so why, should we bitch about the x264 codec (a gpl implementation of h.264)? We should bitch about software patents in general, while we still can (here in the EU)... Also, if you actually read about the licensensing terms, youll see that free implementations are absolutely allowed. You must start paying above a certain number of sold items containing the patented technology. Again, this is similar to mp3. Commercial vendors selling products containing mp3 codecs have to pay. The LAME project does not. The reason why certain distroes dont include mp3 decoders is because it might be that more than 100.000 users download it, and that may count - especially if that vendor sells the distribution as well - as selling product containing the patented algorythm.

Re:Sure

[jZnat]

Because they all come with >$200 worth of features. I personaly got an iRiver H320 for $215 at Best Buy almost a year ago. Probably the best deal I'd ever gotten.

Imagine....

[colonslashslash]

"Imagine four live pictures on a screen at once"

Imagine two of those being horrible brainless reality TV re-runs peppered with commercials for products you wouldn't even think about buying, one a giant fat dirty BSoD and the other a rather fetching locked-up "Do you want to send this error report to Microsoft" dialog box floating happily on a background of hills and blue sky.

Ahh yes, the future is bright. The future is BallmerVision.

Re:Imagine....

[Pharmboy]

When I saw the article title: "Microsoft Sees Future in IPTV" and the line "...Microsoft's biggest dreams may finally be coming true:"

The first thing I thought was "Intellectual Property Television", and "oh great, Microsoft is going to try to patent the idea of selling things on TV. AND start their own TV home shopping channel to boot.".

Must be too many anti-MS articles lately, I'm getting trigger happy....

Re:Imagine....

[vertinox]

Ahh yes, the future is bright. The future is BallmerVision.

So I have to throw a chair at my TV to get it to work?

Re:Imagine....

[jZnat]

Lately, Microsoft has been fighting media-related patents and whatnot that generally get in their way of making an all-in-one media system, whether or not those things are Bad Ideas in the first place. Microsoft's been scoring up on the respect scale ever since they decided that, "hey, this patent shit is getting in our way; let's try to end this now."

Re:Imagine....

[jZnat]

Nah man, you just have to throw a chair at it when it crashes. /lame

Blurring the line...

[fragmentate]

I remember when Amiga was talking about such an environment. Where the lines between appliances were blurred. They dubbed it Digital Convergence but never went very far with it.

The idea was that all of your devices serve a single purpose (they did in 1998, when this was published). But, Amiga had this vision that they'd develop a platform that could live on a TV, a computer, a mobile phone, even a PDA. You could watch TV on your phone. Or you could use your phone over the TV (huh?). Even better, your phone and your TV could be your computer.

The next ten years are definitely going to be interesting. Will Microsoft ever get this thing off the ground? Or will all of the litigation stifle it?

I realize what Microsoft is talking about is a bit different, at least on the surface. But if they have this portable "media OS" they can certainly take it to the next level -- the level of "Digital Convergence".

Re:Blurring the line...

[Anonymous Coward]

Phone over tv, iow, Video Conferencing.

Re:Blurring the line...

[MightyMartian]

Look, WebTV was bad enough for the Internet. Why are repeating it? Look at the mentally handicapped and severely delusional who bought into the first time. I don't think online forums and Usenet could stand another assault from the "I bought my computer at a prayer meeting" crowd.

The real annoyance.

[Elgonn]

Not ads or commercials but: How much DRM and proprietary hardware will be needed to view it?

Re:The real annoyance.

[Wesley Felter]

How much DRM and proprietary hardware will be needed to view it?

The same amount as with digital cable. IPTV looks and feels just like digital cable (the boxes are even made by the same companies); the only difference is RTP/IP vs. TS/QAM transport protocols.

Re:The real annoyance.

[r_cerq]

Not even that. Most deployments I've personally seen are TS/IP, so the main difference is just the transport layer.

More Microsoft Innovation!

[jmorris42]

Yup, nothing truly exists until Microsoft 'Innovates' it into existence. Nope, nobody ever thought of sending video over IP until today, thank God Microsoft is out there inventing the future for us.

Re:More Microsoft Innovation!

[umeshunni]

Are you really stupid or do you just act that way on slashdot?
Where else do you see IPTV right now?

Re:More Microsoft Innovation!

[kill-hup]

College dorms, for one...

Besides, the GP was making the point that IPTV is certainly not a Microsoft innovation and has been around (in theory and in smaller implementations) for a while.

Re:More Microsoft Innovation!

[umeshunni]

>> Students living in Cornell's residence halls will the option of purchasing a new campus television service starting next fall
The article never stated that IPTV was a Microsoft Innovation. It just stated that Microsoft will be providing the software for Telecoms who will deploy IPTV.
The GP's a troll and I chose to bite.

Re:More Microsoft Innovation!

[Anonymous Coward]

Fastweb, IProvo, NTL, Verizon, Free and a few more compagnies are delivering IPTV over FTTH/xDSL to more than hundreds of thousands customers for now.
We will fiber our region within the next three years.
No Microsoft solution in there, but instead linux-powered STBs, linux-powered server (streamer/turnaround, VOD, nPVR, nTS and management), some linux-powered switches/portals among others.
Can I ask where have you been for the last two years?

Ben

Re:More Microsoft Innovation!

[Anonymous Coward]

BT and Virgin demonstrated IPTV many years ago (10 or more, they were planning it many years before that). The BBC is also demonstrating it. As is HomeChoice in the UK.

Basically the providers had to wait until the last mile of delivery got up to the required level, as it is now doing so.

Re:More Microsoft Innovation!

[Godwin O'Hitler]

"Where else do you see IPTV right now?"

Here for example:

http://www.neuf.fr/offres/43/45/47/50/52.html

Re:More Microsoft Innovation!

[Frenchy_2001]

Yup, nothing truly exists until Microsoft 'Innovates' it into existence. Nope, nobody ever thought of sending video over IP until today, thank God Microsoft is out there inventing the future for us.

Yup, in Microsoft world, nothing exist until THEY "invent" it.

I mean, nothing that french ISPs do counts...
Ah... the wonderful world of Microsoft...

By the way, on the internet connection and service side, the US is really backward. In Europe, you can get ADSL (ADSL2+ up to 20Mbps) + IPTV + VOIP for 30euros/month. Wish i could get that here...

Re:More Microsoft Innovation!

[Anonymous Coward]

Where did Microsoft claim video over IP was new?

More creative ways to

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

isolate people from one another, make them sedentary and homebound, render many hours of their days sterile and counterproductive,...

Great, that's all we need, 4 simultaneous screens filled with crap. If only they could raise the level of current programs and take commercials away, I'd pay dearly for such television. In the meantime, I'll stick to my books thank you very much.

Re:More creative ways to

[shadowmatter]

... isolate people from one another, make them sedentary and homebound, render many hours of their days sterile and counterproductive,...

My god, they're making Slashdot TV!

I can't wait for the CmdrTaco news report -- with dupes :)

- shadowmatter

Re:More creative ways to

[Bellum Aeternus]

Yeah, 'cause books don't make you sedintary and they really do help with your social life too. Not that I watch a lot of TV, just the pot shouldn't be calling the kettle black. :-)

Re:More creative ways to

[MightyMartian]

"There was a flood in Jamaica. Ten thousand Bob Marley impersonators were swept out to sea."

[pause]

"And in other news, Jamaicans are worried that ten thousand Bob Marley impersonators may have been killed in freak flooding."

[pause]

"And in other news, the Bob Marley Impersonation Council is asking for donations to help in the recovery after disasterous Jamaican floods."

Re:More creative ways to

[geekoid]

This attitude is a real pet peeve of mine.

first, not everything on TV is crap. What is crap depends on the viewer now, doesn't it?
second, TiVO pretty much deals with the commercial issue.
Third, If they don't know what you would like to see, they'll never make it.
forth, this one is a biggy and may come as a surprise to you so you better be sure your fat ass is sitting down...what am I saying, of course it's sitting down. ok ready? here goes:
There are books that are crap too. More books are crap then every TV show ever. So if you don't want to get involved in any media that doesn't produce crap, I suggest you rip your eyes out of your head, and poke your ear drums out.

Re:More creative ways to

[dada21]

Exactly why a truly revolutionary IPTV medium would:

1. Let you choose what you watch and when (and where: home, PC, PDA, vPod)

2. Let you choose how to pay (ads, PPV, subscription, surveys)

3. Let you choose the quality levels

4. Let you choose value added options (surround sound, multiple views for sports, optional languages)

5. Let anyway buy into the distribution, and receive a revenue share.

Re:More creative ways to

[size1one]

In the meantime, I'll stick to my books thank you very much.

Better enjoy them while they last. Sooner or later we will be forced into using e-books due to lack of trees to make paper with. Then you will have to deal with advertisements on each page.

Re:More creative ways to

[Locke2005]

Well, at least they won't get social diseases...

Did you ever stop to think that perhaps the home-bound internet addicts will be the ONLY ones to survive the next big flu epidemic? Taking farm boys that had never been out of their home town and then shipping them all over the world was a primary cause of the Spanish Flu epidemic. Staying at home prostrating yourself before the glowing CRT could actually save your life!

Re:More creative ways to

[Nqdiddles]

Thank you. Finally there's a slashdot post I can point out to my mother...
See Mum! Sitting in the basement banging away on my computer is actually _good_ for me!

Re:More creative ways to

[superpulpsicle]

ROFLMAO! That's true. It is practically the format/recipe for all of today's news and shows.

Re:More creative ways to

[JedaFlain]

isolate people from one another, make them sedentary and homebound, render many hours of their days sterile and counterproductive,...

Hi, this is Slashdot, you must be new here.

Re:More creative ways to

[jZnat]

Nah man, it'd go something like this:

Zonk: "There was a flood in Jamaica. Ten thousand Bob Marley impersonators were swept out to sea. Update by Z: fixed amount of deaths."

[pause]

CmdrTaco: "And in other news, Jamaicans are worried that ten thousandd Bob Marley impersonaters may have been killed in friek flooding."

[pause]

Cliff: "And in other news, the Bob Marley Impersonation Council is asking for donations to help in the recovery after disasterous Jamaican floods."

[pause]

samzenpus: "Finally, ten thousand idiots impersonating Bob Marley met the Grim Reaper today after the Microsoft fanboys flooded Jamaica with tears after finding out that Windows Vista will not be released until 2008 due to being rewritten using the OpenBSD kernel."

Re:More creative ways to

[cakesy]

Ok, but is sitting in front of your TV really living your life? I used to get worried that I would miss a particular show, and maybe setup the video recorder... but one day I stopped. I thought, so what happens if i miss this show, and what happened was nothing.

It is far to easy to just come home from work, and sit in front of the TV and veg out, but this is not living your life, and should be discouraged as much as possible. There is nothing on TV beyond entertainment value, and it is the lowest form of Entertainment. (Sure you can harp on about documentaries, but that is of questionable value - have you ever tested how much you retain after these documentaries, and there are plenty of other ways of finding about interesting subjects)

With Microsoft Involved...

[ackthpt]

It's doomed. At least what part of it they try to co-opt, manipulate, pwn, etc. Let's face it. They are best off if they stick to Office and Windows, although Vista may be the beginning of the end.

Their track record isn't promising.

Re:With Microsoft Involved...

[Xrathie]

Ya you got to respect all those companies that DONT have 10s of billions in the bank ...I mean Microsoft with all their successful sales of so much software have so horribly failed!!! ...you are funny indeed.

Re:With Microsoft Involved...

[ackthpt]

Ya you got to respect all those companies that DONT have 10s of billions in the bank ...I mean Microsoft with all their successful sales of so much software have so horribly failed!!! ...you are funny indeed.

Not funny. Serious. Only three of Microsoft's divisions show a net profit. Windows and Office the larger, which effectively underwrite their other failures, some of which are large indeed.

That's bad news

[Uukrul]

Microsoft is going to want to do a regulated market. So you may expect regulated IP Television, so no other little player can enter the game. May be a IP Television emission tax wold do the trick.

Popups!

[cycletronic]

Gah, I don't want the new "Refinance your house! Click on your state!" with some weird animal dancing on my TV screen.

Re:Popups!

[Spy der Mann]

Gah, I don't want the new "Refinance your house! Click on your state!" with some weird animal dancing on my TV screen.

No, they just have weird people suffering problems in B/W when suddenly the screen turns color while a salesman yells about a product when a bunch of stupid people applaud for about 30 minutes like it was the holy grail. 1-800-555-DUMB. CALL NOW!!

MS IPTV - watch out !!!!!

[COredneck]

I can see Micro$h!t not only have DRM on any given show but would go as far as not to allow you skip commercial ads. They might even require a human response during the commercials in order to get at people who choose to get a drink or go to the bathroom during the ads.

You will not have any control on how you watch the content.

Re:MS IPTV - watch out !!!!!

[surprise_audit]

That's not completely true. At the moment, there's always the off switch. That may change eventually, but for now you can "vote with your feet" and turn the damn thing off.

Re:Slashdot Censors Dissenting Views

[dustinbarbour]

Don't be such a lunatic. I get that when I try to post anonymously, too. Just log in, stand by your comments and you'll be able to post all day.

No.

[Anonymous Coward]

Given MSNBC, and Microsoft's entire image as a dull, conservative company run by a single megalomaniac, I would have to say that this project is doomed before it starts. No one is going to want Microsoft TV...no one. They're going to pervert the promise of true democratized video to such a level that you won't even be able to get porn.

I'm not saying porn is the bee's knees...just that MS will be so afraid of tarnishing their god fearin' image with the sheeple soccer moms and sheeple sysadmins who buy their inferior software that their content is going to be nothing but a bunch of bleached blonde newscasters and XBox ads.

But at least it'll bring lots of n00bs to Halo Online...

Instant Channel Changes

[Anonymous Coward]

"Instant Channel Changes". I've been looking forward to this features for a few years now ever since digital cable. The digital cable I have is so advanced that when I press flip through channels it literally takes 2 seconds for the picture to come in (i reckon the latency is to decompress or something?). Recently I was reminescing the good old analog days when you could just flip through channels and see the image of what's on (and also why they dont buffer the channel increment or at least screenshots).

--
PS> I hope M$FT or whoever decides to make old and/or documentary type programming available free or subscription based instead of going the route of overcharging.

Adware and Spyware

[kludge99]

This brings a whole new level to the meaning of Adware and Spyware. Talk about your privacy concerns. Microsoft will know not only when you watch TV but also which channels.

Re:Adware and Spyware

[roye]

Talk about your privacy concerns. Microsoft will know not only when you watch TV but also which channels.

While I agree with your concern, how is this different than your current upstream provider? I am not a network guy, but I believe that whether you connect through LocalTown ISP, university, or Global Mega Corp, your HTTP requests travel through someone's router. I am not sure about your television habits, but as far as privacy concerns go my internet sessions reveal much more. Now targeted ads might be one concern, but this could be a good thing (I don't need a car, please stop yelling at me :)

IPTV Shows

[Viking5150]

I watch and recommend some great IPTV shows:

- This Week in Tech
- Digital Life TV
- Systm

These are all hosted by former TechTV hosts.

Wait A Minute....

[mpapet]

I've seen this article before.

1. New MS technology to revolutionize some industry MS doesn't dominate.
2. Feature list that makes you say "wow."
3. Feature list, like most MS products is 99.9% over-promised.
4. Does anyone really want a TV that downloads spam?
5. Does anyone want a TV that can interrupt them?
6. How about a TV that controls what you watch?

I seem to remember some TV viewing software in Windows 95 that made similar promises.

Re:Wait A Minute....

[Locke2005]

Right, 'cause there certainly aren't any other companies besides Microsoft that massively overhype and underdeliver on their new products, is there? {cough}Sony{cough}

Re:Wait A Minute....

[jcr]

Sony hypes their products?

Gee.. I guess they're so far below my radar now that I haven't noticed. What have they done since the Trinitron?

-jcr

WARNING: Written by PR department.

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

"Instant" channel changes? Hardly. Unless you're streaming all 10,000 channels over the customer's DSL2 line... which can't happen.

Sounds nice though, doesn't it?

Re:WARNING: Written by PR department.

[schwaang]

What if you pre-emptively decoded the next channel up and down, and any channel that the user is hovering over in the guide selector (if it's anything like digital cable)?

That would cover 75% of channel changes for me. The rest (where I punch in the channel number instead of surfing the guide) could be helped by keeping frequency-of-use information.

"Hey couch-potato #99432 just pressed 5, he's probably on his way to 550 which he watches on Tuesday nights, so start decoding it now. Oh and Walmart reports he just bought some new brand X shaving cream, show him an ad for brand Y."

I bet that's not how it works, but maybe it could...

Re:WARNING: Written by PR department.

[iosmart]

It's actually true. The channels change a heck of a lot faster than regular digital cable/satellite. I know some people who know some people...

Re:WARNING: Written by PR department.

[easttuth]

Current FTTP deployments allow 55 ms latency in TCP connections. A standard NTSC video signal typically requires a serial bit rate of 143.2 Mb/s. 30 MB/s (typical mid-range FTTP bandwidth) incoming would allow for a nearly instantaneous first frame response time on an NTSC signal, approximately 74.9 ms. Seems pretty instantaneous to me. Theoretically speaking, of course.

Re:WARNING: Written by PR department.

[Anonymous Coward]

Instant channel-changes can be implemented by a unicast burst while in the background a multicast join is carried out.

This brings other - largely GOP-distance related - problems, but makes the pseudo-channel-change an instant one.

Re:WARNING: Written by PR department.

[heelios]

Considering the buffering required for smooth and continuous playback I don't believe we're going to see such a great response time anytime soon.

And as a matter of fact, why is it so important that you don't miss any single frame of a most likely crappy TV show?

Re:WARNING: Written by PR department.

[Wesley Felter]

Your understanding is way off. Digital TV is always transmitted compressed to 8 Mbits/s or less. And the fastest FTTH available in the US is 30 Mbits/s. But the channel-change latency is caused by IGMP join and P/B-frames, not lack of bandwidth.

Considering the source...

[pmike_bauer]

...does IPTV stand for Intellectual Property TV?

I can see it - but different

[Dark Paladin]

From what I've seen, the excitement of "IPTV" seems to be modeled on the wrong things. "Have four screens at once! Imagine all the TV you'll get!"

I think the real magic of IPTV will be convenience. Right now, I have an iPod for Podcasts (yes, the name sucks to some people - deal with it), and a Tivo at home. For some stupid ass reason, Tivo doesn't have their Desktop software with OS X 10.4, but that's another issue.

For me, the beauty of IPTV will be watching whatever I want. Whenver I want. Did I miss "Battlestar Gallactica" or the entire first season of "Veronica Mars" (Hey, I've seen the first three episodes - good show). Or "Firefly". With IPTV, and perhaps some sort of subscription in place of my cable, I can see them. Click the button to my set top Tivo-ish device, and I can watch the episode. Or use my account to view it on my phone as I travel nationwide. Or catch it on my laptop. I wouldn't even mind commercials so much (unless they were done in an onerous fashion - ie: if I pay $2 to watch an episode, I better damn well be able to fast forward a commercial if I want).

The rest of it ("instant channel changes"? My parents had that with a regular TV - it was called "Hey, kid, change the channel") is fluff. But IPTV has a need now. Look at how many people download episodes off of the net. I'll be honest: if I missed a show (pre-Tivo days), I'd bittorrent it and catch the other episodes later. I'm still hoping that Tivo fixes its desktop software to make it 10.4 compatible so next time I hop on a plane I can watch something there instead of feeling bad for violating intellectual property law by downloading a commercial-less TV episode through a peer to peer network. (Yes, I'm not sure if it's officially illegal or not, but since I'm assuming it is not legal, I still feel bad.)

What's going to be interesting is how Microsoft reacts. Right now, Apple has a near lock on the online music industry - and if my theory is right, they're manuevering so that within 5-10 years when iPods are down to $30-$50 apiece (aka - the price of a decent portable CD player right now), they'll make their money by being the driver of online music sales through the iTunes store, thereby becoming the Microsoft of music. (Oh, I'm sure the Apple fans are going to hate me for that one.)

My guess is that Apple is now hoping to do the same thing for online video sales. I don't predict an iPod Video tomorrow, but if Apple has an "Airport Express Video" or some other type of device with a tivo-ish remote control interface (store the movies/video podcasts/etc on your PC, stream through the wireless device in a oh-so-Apple cool and simple interface), they could make a move.

Microsoft is all about the PC - everything is the PC and serves it. Apple I think has learned that, with the iPod, they can keep the PC in there, but it's a side player; without the PC, the iPod would not function, but it doesn't matter if you use Windows or Mac, Apple still makes money. If they introduced another device that was like that, Apple could continue to have the PC be important, but not the *most* important thing.

(Which is why I think their recent market share sales went from 4.5% to 6.6% or something like that according to their latest financial statement - by making the PC unimportant with their devices, they made it easier to buy a Mac. Odd idea, and I'll let someone else tell me how wrong I am.)

If they had a device like that, the studios would be, like the iPod, forced to play with them or risk being locked out. MS would rather you bu a "media center PC" - yet another big complicated expensive box for the house, which may be giving them tunnel vision in their IPTV plans. So I'm not sure if they get it - but we'll just have to wait and see.

Of course, this is all my opinion. I could be wrong.

Re:I can see it - but different

[Krach42]

I sure one can very easily argue that watching a bittorrented version of a previously broadcast TV show is legitimate fair use.

I mean, think about it this way, if you were to record it to a tape, and cut out the commercials. We've already had established court precedent that this is entirely legal.

Next, George asks you, "Hey, Bob, did you record the most recent Survivor? I missed it." You say, "Hells yeah, it's awesome. Here, have my copy/I'll make you a copy." Again, reasonable fair-use. George could have legitimately copied it himself, he's in the same distribution network as you.

Now, replace tape, with DivX. And handing some one a copy with download over Bittorrent.

If you're not selling the tapes, then there can't really be anything wrong with it from a Fair Use point of view. You can always argue that these are things you *could have* recorded yourself.

If you could have legally obtained a copy within Fair Use, then why would it be illegal to obtain it from someone else who obtained it within Fair Use, and is just sharing.

Now, if someone from outside the distribution network gets ahold of it (like say, France doesn't get it until a week after us) I think sharing it with them wouldn't be right. But if you *could have* watched, it and you *could have* recorded it (and even more to the point, if you *did* record it on TiVo) then they can go suck on a Fair Use lemon.

Re:I can see it - but different

[demmer]

The rest of it ("instant channel changes"? My parents had that with a regular TV - it was called "Hey, kid, change the channel") is fluff.

this is important. not if comparing to normal tv, but when comparing microsofts iptv solution to others. changing to a different streamed channel is only possible at an i-frame (or else you get a screwed up or no image until the next one). with mpeg2 they come pretty often, with mpeg4 they come less often. with both you cannot switch imideately.

microsoft uses a combination of unicast and multicast to get by this problem. check their site for more information: http://www.microsoft.com/tv/default.mspx

Re:I can see it - but different

[Anonymous Coward]

As soon as you leant it to your friend, it was no longer fair use. That's where your logic fails.

Fair use does not cover 'my friend forgot to record it, so I gave him mine'. There are time-shifting (I could have watched it at 2pm, but I was in the john, so I watched it at 5pm, Betamax Supreme Court case) and in some people's minds space-shifting (I recorded it in my bedroom off of cable but want to display it in my living room/my cottage where there is no cable, I don't have a precedent) or even format-shifting (Ripping from a CD to MP3 to allow it playing on a device, or to record a mix CD, I think there were Diamond RIO court cases establishing this).

But for all these justifications, I have not seen one that justifies distributing a copy to a friend. If so, it is extremely limited. A pub can't even show a movie to a large group of friends, a company can't use a movie to show to all of its employees in a company meeting without paying if it's big enough. Clearly once you've got a big enough group of 'friends' you would be into the performance/distribution territory.

Aside from these 'performances', sharing between friends (outside a household) is likely to be rarely prosecuted but not necessarily open to a fair use defense. It is extremely grey.

Re:I can see it - but different

[Krach42]

Well, the issue covers control of the copyright owner to control distribution. Which, if you pass it out to a large enough people, they lose those distribution rights.

Now that I'm thinking about it... if you started running off hundreds of copies of a tape and passing it out to friends who ask for it, then that would, like you say, not be covered by Fair-Use. Of course, if you present it to them in unaltered format, (comercials and all) you could likely reasonably argue that you're not damaging their distribution rights, as you're presenting it to your friends exactly as you got it. Hazy yeah, but if you could argue reasonably that every method that they generate revenue is being maintained, then what would they have to complain about?

Now, let's shift gears from mass distribution, to individualized distribution. Your friend comes by and asks if you recorded the most recent episode of Lost, and if he can borrow it. You give him your recorded of TV onto tape copy. In many ways this should be reasonably covered by the same Fair Use rights the same way that reselling a book is covered by Fair Use.

TiVo has oft been fighting with the networks towards the ability of their users to be able to share content with others. The networks have generally argued that they're generally fine with video sharing, they're just *really* worried about people distributing beyond the distribution patterns. For example, if my friends (in MST) could share shows in real time with me (in PST) then I could watch Lost 1 hour earlier. This is obviously a violation of their distribution rights. If they wanted to, they would have aired Lost here at the same time as everyone else, but they've chosen not to.

Again, it's all about distribution rights. If I'm not stepping on their distribution rights, then it's alright.

For example, I got a copy of Prison Break Ep 1 and 2 (because I missed them), but when I loaded them up, they had blurred out the FOX logo in the lower right hand corner. I was upset, because this is stepping on their distribution rights. If they didn't want the FOX logo there, they would have not put it there in the first place.

I was getting a copy of the shows because I missed them initially on TV. I will be watching the rest of the series on broadcast TV, and if I want to catch up on the first two episodes, there shouldn't be anything wrong with that. But I'd rather get a direct copy of the show, exactly what they aired, not some bullcrap where they've edited it just because they have no respect for the people how own the distribution rights.

My friends annoy me too, beccause they'll download the episodes and watch them over the computer rather than watch them on TV at broadcast time. It's like, wtf dude? I mean, I've heard of lazy bastards, but you're actively exerting more energy to get a copy of it online than to just sit down in front of a TV and watch it. *sigh*

I try and respect these sorts of rights of the copyright holders. Naturally, there are some conditions that I have, that hey, I wanna catch up on the series. I shouldn't have to wait for it to come out on DVD to catch up on these episodes that have already aired in my area. But at the same time, if I don't respect their copyrights, then they'll stop making these shows. It's a fine line to tread the path of Fair Use, because it *is* a violation of the copyright owners rights. The matter is just that, in the case of Fair Use, full respect of the copyright owners rights would violate the individual's rights receivinng it. So the question is always, how much should I be allowed to violate their rights to protect my rights. I argue that if you're not damaging in anyway their bottom line, and you're not infringing on their distribution rights (only passing material out where it's already otherwise accessible, not damaging any marks indicating ownership, and not removing any accredidation, like the credits) then it's Fair Use. Of course, if it ever gets to court, the question is if I can convince a jury or judge that this actually is Fair Use.

Over what pipeline?

[rubberbando]

I can't see a cable/satelite company letting them send a competing television service using their pipeline and I can't see a phone/dsl provider letting them provide a competing phone service using their pipeline either.

Re:Over what pipeline?

[Chokolad]

Have you read TFA ?

record 4 primte time shows

[Anonymous Coward]

You may wish to record 4 prime time shows at once though .. and only watch one at a time. Sometimes a show you are interested in on TLC is on at the same time a good show on the Discovery channel is on. So 4 simultaneous channel reception/decoding capability is not totally useless.

Instant channel changes!!

[DysenteryInTheRanks]

Wow, "instant channel changes" is touted as a feature. Does anyone else remember when TVs had dials that instantly changed the channel? And then remote controls that did the same thing? Or when cable boxes could instantly change the channel?

It was only within the last 10 years that we began watching digitally compressed content over cable and satellite, and the decompression lag made flipping channels really slow. Now Microsoft is fixing things back to the way they _used_ to work in the first place and sellilng that as a feature.

Oh ya, they'll also let you work on a computer using the TV as a monitor, just like in the late 1970s. Yip. Ee.

Re:Instant channel changes!!

[bdcrazy]

New and Improved!
No Batteries Required!
No waiting to save the image! ... on a package for a manual advance film camera for sale at target.

The more things change, the more they attempt sell you the same old crap and call it new.

I wish...

[AnonymousYellowBelly]

... MS wouldn't see IT'S future. Someday I'll tell my son about the meteorite that exterminated MS vampires ;-)

I'm in awe...

[xwizbt]

As someone who's recently challenged the UK licencing team for the right to own a TV without paying for the BBC, I'll be interested to see what content can be offered that will lure me back. I don't want to be treated like an idiot, don't expect my television to provide my opinion for me, don't want to find out what 'expert's think of something and prefer to have references to back up facts. I don't imagine this will go far.

Slashdot Comments Random Sampling

[NthDegree256]

Slashdot Comments Random Sampling

"Consumers will see cool new features -- imagine four live pictures on a screen at once -- instant channel changes and more options for on-demand video rentals, including high-definition content. Microsoft TV also merges phone services, so incoming messages, e-mail and caller ID can be displayed on users' television screens."

Comments: "Four pictures? What kind of idiots are they, who needs four pictures at once," "on-demand video rentals? great, another pipeline for Microsoft to start sucking money out of," "messages, email, and caller ID on my screen? too much clutter, Micro$oft!"

Now, imagine it with one key word changed.

"Consumers will see cool new features -- imagine four live pictures on a screen at once -- instant channel changes and more options for on-demand video rentals, including high-definition content. Apple TV also merges phone services, so incoming messages, e-mail and caller ID can be displayed on users' television screens."

Comments: "Four pictures? Hmm, can't say I'd use it myself but I can see people wanting this," "on-demand video rentals? good, they'll probably tie it in to iTunes so it can all go through one smooth source," "messages, email, and caller ID on my screen? leave it to Apple to find a clean, simple way to tie everything together in one package!"

Or even...

"Consumers will see cool new features -- imagine four live pictures on a screen at once -- instant channel changes and more options for on-demand video rentals, including high-definition content. Insert your favorite Linux distro here TV also merges phone services, so incoming messages, e-mail and caller ID can be displayed on users' television screens."

Comments: "Four pictures? all right, that's a good way to manage things," "on-demand video rentals? great, that's just what I need! I'll even stop pirating because the open-source community is finally getting in the action," "messages, email, and caller ID on my screen? so convenient! Why can't those hacks at Micro$oft come up with something like this?"

Hey, I'm having fun with this.

"Consumers will see cool new features -- imagine four live pictures on a screen at once -- instant channel changes and more options for on-demand video rentals, including high-definition content. SCO TV also merges phone services, so incoming messages, e-mail and caller ID can be displayed on users' television screens."

Comments: ... well, I think we all know how this one will go.

And personally, I'd just like to add... four screens? Imagine a beowulf cluster...

Couldn't give a damn

[Linker3000]

Quite frankly as technology moves forward, TV becomes less and less important in my life so the prospect of 4 simultaneous screens, interactive 'this', view again 'that' leaves me cold. For the same reason, building new features into the TV is aiming at the wrong device - I spend more time on my computer than watching TV - and that's NOT to say I live and breathe computers 24/7.

The Internet is a wonderful tool that has allowed me to do my job (IT support and consultancy), keep in touch with old friends, see what's on in the local cinemas, check out local live music, order books, CDs and DVDs online and contribute to technical discussions etc. and gadgets such as a SmartPhone and PDA mean I can check email and perform remote diagnostics and configs wherever I am.

Sad techie? - not really, the portability of my support tools means I do not have to be tied to the office all day - I can be 'on the road' meeting people, working from home or even taking 'time out' to do what I want to do until something needs my attention. Far from nailing me down in front of a 'media wall' of plasma/LCD TVs, the Internet and technology has got me 'out and about', socialising and spending more time in the real world.

The prospect of more sophisticated media delivery via the Internet is 'logical' from an evolutionary perspective but right now I'd give up my TV if it wasn't for my 5 year old Son and his Children's programs, my wife's love for all things 'soap' and the fact that I watch the news every now and then.

Deliver my 'regular' TV via IP if you wish but do it because it makes it cheaper or happens to be 'the way to go', but not because you think I am crying out for wall-to-wall soaps, drama, comedy etc. 4-up on the display!

Information and learning via IP TV - well Digital analogue, digital terrestrial and satellite can do that already. but I suppose you gain interactivity 'built in'. Alert me when a phone call comes in? - er, my basic phone does that by making a noise. Well I suppose with the new system, when a call comes in it will start to record the current programme in case I miss something - well, if the program was *that* watchable I'd keep watching unless ther was some kind of emergency - but the number of times that has happened in my life so far? - er - zero; and if I miss the news it will be round again in half an hour.

The target markets are interesting - India, China and 'developing' countries - hmm, sounds like a good idea to lock every one into your 'all-in-one' system whereas right now I have the freedom to buy a TV, radio, computer (email), landline telephone service and rent DVDs from anyone I want and mix and match service providers to suit me - oh, and then what happens when there's a local distribution point failure - I lose all my comms and media services in one go?? - brilliant!!

It may be possible

[Wesley Felter]

Anything less than one jnd is "instant", and I vaguely remember reading that MS has some trick to do channel changes in only a few RTT, which would be good enough.

(Background: Analog TV systems can usually change channels in a few frames. But digital systems have to wait for the next I-frame, which may be a half-second or more. But if a server sent you the previous I-frame over unicast, you could start decoding much sooner.)

Been there, done that!

[Anonymous Coward]

imagine four live pictures on a screen at once...

I've previously imagined 10 live pictures at once. ;-)

DirecTV has this

[Kallahar]

DirecTV has a few stations that show four shows at once. It's a quick way to see what's on on several networks at once, or you can see what story the major news channels are showing. Only one has sound.

It may sound like a fun idea, but in reality it really isn't all that useful, you can only have sound on one at a time anyway, and I'm sure you can't read the CC for four stations at once...

The Devil's Playground

[Doomedsnowball]

If you have time to watch television you are completely useless to everyone and everything except marketers. TV is no longer the best medium for either entertainment or information. Or productivity if you are watching it on a computer. If you are interested in this new Microsoft product, you should just go and take yourself out of the gene-pool thus cutting demand for this kind of useless crap.

don't scare me like that!

[v1]

IPTV is more commonly know arond these parts as Iowa Public Television, the state run science, educational, and childrens channel. That would have to be one of the last places I would want to see M$. (it's bad enough M$ has managed to get advertisements on what used to be an advertisement-free channel)

Ballmervision?

[convex_mirror]

Ballmervision reminds me of: "The Battle for the minds of North America will take place in the Video Arena: the videodrome." But I'll just assume I don't need to get a mental image of Ballmer pulling a gun out of his, ahem, stomach. Argh, too late, too late. /obscure?

Innovation...

[JordanL]

Kudos to MS for actually implementing something no one ever has before.

IPTV is the Future

[Anonymous Coward]

Now whether Microsoft is part of that future remains to be seen, but I think IPTV will replace all of the other technologies out there. It already has support for some great features, and the possibilities are endless. I have IPTV with an AmiNET110 box and I couldn't be more pleased with my setup. There are still many features to be sought, but it allows for easy updates and adding of features, includes gaming and IR keyboard support, not to mention it is based on Linux.

Well duh

[Solr_Flare]

IPTV(or some similar implementation) is the future. Same as digital distrobution gaining ground in the music industry and gaming industry. The movie industry is already exploring their options too.

The problem is, and always has been, our sorely lacking infastructure. Not every home has broadband, and most homes that do can't afford the "super deluxe" high bandwith options. Beyond that, most ISPs offer horrendusly shoddy customer service. Frequent outages, slow speeds, etc are the norm(more so the futher you move out of densely populated regions).

Without a good infastructure in place, IPTV and the like will never be huge money making successes. This is especially the case because poor digital signal results in horrendous pixelation and audio distortion. At least with analog you just get a slightly fuzzier picture. You need strong consistant bandwidth to pull this off and most places just aren't there yet. We *are* getting there, but we've got another decade or two to go before it gets really solid.

And that's in technologically sophisticated countries. Tack on another 20 to 100 years to that figure for 3rd world countries.

There's a terrifying thought

[Anonymous Coward]

The future is BallmerVision.

Monkeyboy, Monkeyboy, Monkeyboy. Can somebody please think of the chairs?

Worst Fear: A BSoD on my TV

[Anonymous Coward]

The only problem I have with this is MS's trackrecord w/ stability. Do we really want a TV that will go belly up and need to be rebooted in the middle of our pay-per-download movie?

Re:Slashdot Censors Dissenting Views

[Anonymous Coward]

Back to the Future 2 already envisioned this.

Main use for multi screen is sports

[xswl0931]

Could come in handy if you're watching the Olympics

Re:Main use for multi screen is sports

[SgtChaireBourne]

Could come in handy if you're watching the Olympics

And just how do you expect to get access to coverage of the Olympics. The major networks in the US negotiate exclusive deals which cover whole geographic regions. They're not going to give that up willingly or easily. They've got too much riding on not letting you watch via other means to let that happen.

Re:Main use for multi screen is sports

[xswl0931]

With the last Olympics, I could easily switch to different stations to watch different events. I have DirectTV (I assume the same would be true for Comcast or other cable companies as it's really nothing specific to DirectTV). If DirectTV decides to use Microsoft's IPTV solution, I would be able to view multiple channels at the same time. However, you could argue that I could do that today by having a TV that displayed four channels at once and having four tuners. The benefit of Microsoft's solution is that I don't need a special TV and it's using software based tuners.

bad TV outdone

[wardk]

wow, and I though television had sunk to it's lowest already.

moore's law applies to the bottom end too, eh?

Think of the children!

[havardi]

Why does every new product/technology have to be "used in India, China and other developing countries, where it could provide education and government services"?

Re:Think of the children!

[Xrathie]

Because America is full of a bunch of dumb asses that think tech people are dumb asses and Britney Spears is a genious ...but that isnt the only reason...

Re:Think of the children!

[Anonymous Coward]

Think of the children? Wait till you have to prove you weren't thinking of the children, that is when a trojan infects your Windows system and turns it into a child porn webserver!!!! Interactive commercial: click any key to download and install "Children's Free Movies Channel".

On the eve of Apple announcement

[andygrace]

Interesting timing considering Apple's probably going to release an iTunes style video download store tomorrow.

The problem is not how to get more live streams of video into the lounge room, but how to get a viewer's favorite shows delivered to them automatically and display them on a big screen without rewiring the house. That's why a wireless link between TV and computer with cheap integrated H.264 decoder is a brilliant idea. 1.5+ Megabits/sec of H.264 can be fairly decent HD and it's not going to overtax broadband connections.

We need to move to a non-linear world of video and move away from the '57-channels-and-nothing-on' effect. Video podcasting/TV on demand is better and there are two business models - pay per show, without any commercials or free with some kind of advert at the start.

This is a geniune threat to the current broadcast/satellite operators and as well as video rental stores, but it is a great model for content producers. And think of all those statistics.

IPTV/Network Broadcast/Satellite/Cable is still good for live events, but most television is prerecorded and show based. I think Apple have this one nailed.

Re:On the eve of Apple announcement

[Xrathie]

Why would anyone pay Apple for this? Most people in the world have heard of or used Microsoft products already and this chritmas many millions are going to buy a XBOX 360 with a Windows Media Externder built in so they can stream video right from the Internet... Apple isnt needed and doesnt have the technical and monetary resources to put it all together anyway.

single play DVD?

[pbjones]

Single Play DVD, Now IPTV? I can't see a breakthough here as people have been streaming video for years and I doubt that anything does will be 'almost' seamless. Good luck to them, if they can get the major content providers to play the game too.

Re:single play DVD?

[Xrathie]

WoW that has to be embarrassing. The single play DVD was a hoax. And if you think streaming video over the Internet is what they are talking about I suggest you open a scifi book or two and start reading.

Instant channel changes?

[fbg111]

Consumers will see cool new features -- imagine four live pictures on a screen at once -- instant channel changes

Yeah, I hate having to wait several minutes from when I push the channel change button to when the channel actually changes, as with all current TV's. What a godsend this new innovation will be!

IPTV as development tool?

[grcumb]

I haven't seen anyone comment on this yet, so here goes....

The summary states that MS hopes to partner with developing nations like China and India to use IPTV as an educational tool. As someone who works full-time on IT in development, I'd like to offer my considered opinion that this is one of the worst possible suggestions one could possibly make.

The resource requirements for a service such as this would be incredibly expensive, especially relative to the amount of money available. Most importantly, it would require a massively centralised infrastructure that is almost the exact opposite of the kind of setup that would actually benefit rural communities. Production studios, distribution facilities, high bandwidth network infrastructure in places that barely even have a power grid - how could this possible look like a good idea?

I'll tell you how: MS is doing the same thing that the IMF and others have done for decades. They're trying to sucker these countries into building a system that will keep them chained to MS for an entire generation, simply by tying a ribbon around it and saying, 'Think of the children!'

It is, in my opinion, a cynical and calculated move to take money from the hands of those who could make a real difference and put it into the hands of the rich.

It sickens me to see people taking advantage of others who are poor and ignorant. Unfortunately, this kind of thing happens all the time in developing nations. It looks like MS is growing up as a corporation, and learning to follow in the footsteps of those who have gone before.

Re:IPTV as development tool?

[Xrathie]

Wake up friend. Ask yourself that same thing about the nuclear power industry and China ...http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.09/china. html Why India and China? They dont have corporations that have investments in an existing infrastructure that will pay off politicians to slow down or make illegal new technologies.

Re:IPTV as development tool?

[daemonenwind]

Yes, Microsoft deploying internet TV to underdeveloped areas like China and India is moronic. But stock analysts aren't techies, they just hear, "2 billion potential customers on a government contract!" Bada-bing, MS stock goes up 50 cents. No way in hell MS would market services to an area of the world that can't even pay full localized price for a stripped-down and insanely cheap copy of Windows XP.

And we all know it.

What MS should do is market this idea to colleges and inner-city schools, since broadband penetration is strongest and easiest in highly urban areas. Think how schoolkids - and the technology sector - could benefit from different MS luminaries teaching courses in programming. (seriously) Or people from Sun, Google or any other tech company you can think of. There is power in the idea, but not for the third world yet. The USA's own third world can use it now.

But as for the IMF, the main concern they always have is, "How are you going to pay this loan back?" Quite frankly, there's no point to giving Ethiopia 2 billion USD if all they'll do with it is plant corn, eat all the corn saving none for seed, skim 500 million off the top for the cronies, and make no infrastructure improvements that would allow for the sort of industrial/agribusiness base that could create tax income to even think about paying the interest on those loans.

And it's not like the Mafia. You don't have to take the money if you don't like the terms. And hell, half the time the loans are forgiven for some foreign policy move anyway.

Podcast?

[Anonymous Coward]

Another Apple whore on loose...

I'm Very Impressed

[MightyMartian]

I'm very impressed by your theory, but it seems to me to be incomplete. For instance, where does the assassination of JFK come into play? I mean, it doesn't broach how his coffin was dumped into the ocean, or how the UN and the Rockefellers are plotting to take over America in the New World Order.

Swe(buffering...45%)et!

[Optic7]

Inst(buffering...33%)ant chan(buffering...15%)nel chan(buffering...7%)ges!

IP/TV is a registered trademark of Cisco Systems

[karl.auerbach]

IP/TV is a registered trademark of Cisco Systems.

(I know this because I was one of the primary authors of the product by that name.)

Project the present ...

[twitter]

Imagine two of those being horrible brainless reality TV re-runs peppered with commercials for products you wouldn't even think about buying, one a giant fat dirty BSoD

You've given them too much credit! I don't have to imagine, all I have to do is open up Internet Exploder. Advertisements take up 3/4 of the screen, leaving about 1/4 for your reality TV show. Pop ups will come at random to cover the one thing you want to look at, so "Power Users" will deploy Dual and Quad screen "solutions". As Outlook does with your email, M$ PhoneHome will lose your real calls in a sea of spam.

But it will be carnivore friendly! After M$ has sold all of your buying, banking, watching habits, social and genetic index data to the highest bidders, they will happily provide transcripts of your phone call and living room conversations to Copyright^H^H^H^H^H^HLaw Enforcement on demand. Those flunkies are good for something, it's just not privacy or entertainment.

Where did you want to go yesterday (1993)? Right, there you are! Single screen GUI, not quite WYSIWYG, not very fast, insecure and buggy as hell.

Re:Project the present ...

[The Bungi]

Ahhhh, twitter. Good old twitter. Riddle me this if you will. Media Center PCs (set-top boxes and the like) work fine. The Xbox works fine. SmartPhones work fine. At least no worse than any other comparable consumer electronic products made by any other company.

So... given Microsoft's track record here so far, are you serious, or are you just taking another opportunity to do your 'M$ is teh suxx0rz" routine?

Just curious, really. Your posts have an ever so slight edge of apparent intelligence that it would be unfair to dismiss them outright.

Re:Project the present ...

[twitter]

Riddle me this if you will. Media Center PCs (set-top boxes and the like) work fine. The Xbox works fine. SmartPhones work fine.

That depends on your definition of "fine". Those not so smart phones have a bad reputation and everyone got to see the new media center work. I can compare that to my Nokia cell phone, my Handspring Visor, anyone else's game console or any DVD player on the market. Nothing Microsoft will ever work. If it did they could not sell you an upgrade later and that would be their version of the suck.

More importantly, they've been caught selling their customers out, breaking competitor's software and doing all that kind of shit again and again. They have burnt EVERYONE who does business with them. Why would anyone trust them with anything?

Re:Project the present ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Moderators: Please note that "twitter" is a known fanatical sycophant whose obnoxious offtopic rants are legend here on Slashdot. It doesn't matter what the topic is, he'll find a way to scrape in some pointless Microsoft bashing. While nobody expects us to love Microsoft in any way, his particularly tepid style of calling anyone he replies to "troll" or "liar" or "fanboy" because he happens to disagree with whatever they're saying is well documented and should not be rewarded. If anything, twitter is the type of person that should not be part of the open source/free software community. He is an anathema to all that is good about free software.

I'm posting this so that you (the moderator) have some context to consider twitter and not mod him up whenever he posts his filler preformatted rants about installing Knoppix or Mepis or whatever that unfortunately get him karma every single time and allow him to continue posting his trademark toxic crap (read on) day in and day out. You may consider this a troll - I consider it community service. And I ain't kidding.

If you're a /. subscriber, I invite you to look through some of his posting history. I guarantee that you'll be hard pressed to find someone that is more "out there" than twitter. You'll also probably notice he's got quite an AC following. Don't just read his posts, make sure you go through the replies.

To get an idea of what I'm talking about, check this post out. This is an article about email disclaimers. The parent of the post is complaining about the ads in the linked page and so on, and twitter actually goes off on a rant to blame it on Microsoft and recommend Lynx, because "is teh free".

Here's another. In this post twitter not only calls the OP a troll but attempts to "tell it like it is" while making some vague argument about "GNU". Yes, if you're confused, you're not alone. The reply (modded +4) proceeds to simply destroy his bogus argument. You will notice he did not reply. This is what some people call "drive-by advocacy". A sort of I'll just leave you with my thoughts here and move on to the next flamebait kind of deal. In fact, he almost never replies because he knows that his fanatical arguments simply do not hold up to any sort of discussion. It's not that he's chosen the wrong cause - he's just going at it in a completely wrong way.

Here's that drive-by advocacy and FUD in motion: twitter goes on about some topic and then drops the usual "oh and M$ is teh evil" because "WMP phones home" or some such. Called on his FUD, he then claims that WMP stores every song and movie you've ever played in a file, somewhere. Pressed further, he just sort of slithers out of sight, his FUD-spreading complete. This is not about some Microsoft technology that nobody likes anyway; it's about lying for the sake of lying. Way too many of his posts are exactly like this one.

More? Just read though this post and the subsequent replies. I guess this stands on its own. Or these two. Or this one. Or this one.

Still not convinced? This is what twitter considers "humour" while going about his daily "M$" routine.

M

Re:Project the present ...

[The Bungi]

That depends on your definition of "fine"

As in "they work unless you drop them from a building into a pool" fine.

Those not so smart phones have a bad reputation

In your mind maybe. The Treo has a bad reputation as well. So do some brands of toasters.

everyone got to see the new media center work

Yeah, a preproduction model crashed and not one ever worked, ever again. Wait, is this one of those things you intend to use a sound bytes for the rest of eternity in your "M$ sux let me tell you why" diatribes? Kinda like the "Microsoft sues schools and takes candy away from children" one you use so much? Oh, I remember. They sure do make for great FUD, don't they?

Nothing Microsoft will ever work.

Right.

Way to go MSFT...

[HockeyPuck]

Well.. it's nice to know that MSFT has decided to implement what Cisco has been delivering for years... http://www.cisco.com/en/US/netsol/ns340/ns394/ns15 8/ns88/networking_solutions_package.html

I wish MSFT would just realize they are an OS/application company and not a networking company....

Re:Way to go MSFT...

[Anonymous Coward]

I just wish Cisco would realise they are not a good networking company.

Re:Way to go MSFT...

[Xrathie]

If Cisco has been delivery it for years it has been in some other universe. It is one thing to make a technology. It is an entirely different thing to package it with all the other needed technologies and distribute it. Microsoft 1 ..Cisco 0.

4 live pictures at once? bah...

[Anonymous Coward]

No one will ever need more than 2 live pictures at once.

I can see it now...

[Cytlid]

...calling up my friends... "Quick channel 2304! Porn virus!"

its allready here

[eternal]

We and several independent telco's are using it. Occam networks works with many people with it in the field. The set tops look to be CE have pvr and everything except hd

Sounds good

[flamingiceclone]

hook up a web cam and we have video phone..

(not the regular one...i mean like "the island")....it makes me so jetsons-ly..... commentator:will he make...(TV rings..incoming call - jeff)

TV: take call??

me:yes...

me: jeff get the *&&^$& off im trying to watch the game...

jeff: (disgustingly wearing only boxers)yo did u see mark on the 4th pushes button

TV: accept time marker??

me: yes

TV splits screen in 2 half jeff and half the clip from the game he sent

me: that bastard he told me he lost his tickets...

i end call and tv goes back to playing game full screen

IPTV in Mountain View CA

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft is to have a news event at the Mountain View Computer Musuem to rival the recent sun micro/google hype sideshow. Ballmer's mappoint system in his car navigation system fails and he misses the event only a few hundred feet from the MSFT campus.

really! uh, shure.

[Anonymous Coward]

So, this is funny. And it's got nothing to do with bashing really. This story keeps snaking itself through the various print and online presses, about how it's the next great thing, how Microsoft is well positioned etc. The thing that cracks me up is that hardly anybody close to the fire seems to share the point of view that these guys have something that will see the light of day anytime soon in a flavor anyone's going to be willing to live with. Or that even anywhere near most of their homework is done. Yet, these stories continue to emerge. You have got to admit that the PR machinery driving this is impressive in its impact.

Re:Slashdot Censors Dissenting Views

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdot is the Fox News(TM) of internet news sites, just with a different agenda. I mean to be news it has to be anti Microsoft, pro Google and blogaramic. But at least they are still fair and balanced(TM).

Re:IP/TV is a registered trademark of Cisco System

[Wesley Felter]

No one cares. Other companies (Minerva and Kasenna come to mind) have been selling IPTV products for years. It's a little late for Cisco to put the smack down on an entire industry now.

Yea invisible to the consumer, until ...

[olddotter]

Yea invisible to the consumer, until they have to reboot right at the best part of the movie.

Really a show of hands for the people who want MS software in their TV, stereo, car, planes, traffic lights, etc. Is anyone that stupid?

Re:Yea invisible to the consumer, until ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Raises hand! WinXP hasn't crashed for me in years, and I'm sure a system with limited hardware variations such as an IPTV setbox would work as intended :)

Re:Yea invisible to the consumer, until ...

[olddotter]

I have to reboot Win XP have the time I switch networks because DHCP can't release and get a new IP. So while that might not be a crash, its just as bad in that it results in a reboot and 5 minutes of lost time.

Microsoft innovates

[amichalo]

Maybe it's closer to the first of April than I realize, but this sounds very innovative of Microsoft. Actually, it sounds like something Apple should be making.

In the spirit of even-a-broken-watch-is-right-twice-a-day, I applaud Microsoft.

Re:Microsoft innovates

[demmer]

there is no innovation at all. it has all been done before. microsoft has to offer a solution in this area. it has no choice. unfortunately for them they do not offer much besides the little media hype.

imagine four live pictures on a screen at once

[porky_pig_jr]

with my short attention span, sounds (eh, looks) like a great idea to me.

Back to the 1990's.

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember webTV with Captain Kirk (William Shattner) as the representive? I had friends who work there and another bubble popped. Oracle had the same thing but I forgot what they called it. I think Oracle Video-on-Demand or something like that and I set up their network infrastructure there which was a big pain with all of the video processing equipment. I know that Oracle sold that business to nCube but now I don't know what it is doing now.

Re:Re-boot your TV in the middle of a Game?

[Khan]

Exactly. When I watch live tv, I watch it on the regular connection. For everything else, there's MythTV. I don't watch "LiveTV" through it just because I'm not interested in pausing what I'm watching. That's what the PVR portion of it is for. AND it does a great job of flagging and skippng those pesky commercials. Talk about optimized viewing! Your typical 60 min show is actually about 40 mins. long if you cut out all the ad crap. And that's the way I like it!

And to those TV execs that are whinning about the auto commercial skip, WTF do you care! My PVR is still recording the fucking things which means that you have a "viewer" during that entire time. So what if I don't want to watch ad's. That's my fucking choice, assholes.

Education?

[Fortress]

...where it could provide education and government services as well as entertainment via the television.

Yes, because we've all seen how the proliferation of television has resulted in a more informed, educated populace. If anything, it's just the opposite: A lowest-common-denominator, consent-manufacturing propaganda tool. I'm pretty sure people grow less critical and more sheep-like with each hour they watch.

Just the sort of thing we want in the hands of a company with a history like Microsoft's.

IPTV vs. Satellite Direct.. no contest

[xtal]

The wild success of DirectTV, Bell ExpressVu and it's ilk basically slammed TV over wires - even classic big fat wires like Cable badly. I was involved with one such failed venture, and at one point, there were a half dozen companies in the space. It's technically possible but makes almost no sense.

I'm not sure where microsoft sees themselves positioned, but the problem is you need to have a service provider for your IPTV -and- a broadband link, and if you believe your video streams aren't going to interfere with your bandwidth.. especially over a few boxes.. heh

It doesn't make sense, and consumers aren't stupid, educated by decades of passionate hatred for Cable companies.

You want to know where IPTV has a chance? It's in interactive pr0n services direct to your TV. That, and maybe gambling. The satellite companies must make a fortune off pr0n, but they can't do the interactive thing. The webchat adult entertainment companies make a mint, but don't have a plug-it-in-and-play (ha) solution for the bedroom and living room. Anyone want a consultant? :-)

Sasktel Max

[Alistar]

This sounds exactly like the television service that one of our Telecom companies offers already:

Sasktel Max

I don't do cable and I won't do MS IPTV

[Anonymous Coward]

Really, it's mostly garbage so why bother? Read a book.

Targeted Ads

[ZachPruckowski]

Now targeted ads might be one concern, but this could be a good thing (I don't need a car, please stop yelling at me :)

I agree. I think it could be great for all involved, but there are issues. The fact that I only see ads I'm interested in, and the company only distributes to people who care, is very good. And the ads won't be crap, because they'll cost serious money to make (being video ads, I assume), so only companies with serious products (as opposed to "imported prescription drugs" or whatever) could use them).

However, there are a few bugs. This system already exists to some degree in TV. They place ads in shows based on who is likely to watch.

Additionally, let's say we have a thirtyish couple with young child (which could be me in ten years, when this is fully established). If the adults watch serious shows (drama or comedy or whatever), and the hypothetical kid watches Barney or whatever, there is a decent chance the kid will get the parent ads, and vice-versa, making the system a bit less efficient. Now, I bet they could program around that extreme an example, but let's face facts, TVs are used by a lot of people. I don't think they could get around that if the TV in my suite has 4-6 different types of personality watching it (when we finally get the cable to work). I don't want my roommate's ads, and he doesn't want mine.

Lastly, this might be bad, in that it could reveal something about the dominant watcher that they don't like. For instance, if a guy's girlfriend is watching his TV and a "Girls Gone Wild" ad comes up in an unusual place, that is evidence that you were watching something besides CNN and NBC comedies.

Instant channel changes!

[SuperMog2002]

Consumers will see cool new features -- imagine four live pictures on a screen at once -- instant channel changes and more options for on-demand video rentals, including high-definition content.

Who'd of thought we'd ever be able to instantly change channels without having to wait for a keyframe? Oh wait, my 20 year old Sony Trinitron did that, as does my 1 year old Wega...

Re:Instant channel changes!

[Utopia]

The article is refering to the fact that currently Digital Cable Subscribers using set top boxes from companies like Comcast etc. don't get instant channel change.
My TV can also change channels instantly for OTA transmissions
but for MPEG2 compressed digital channels there is a noticeable lag.

IPTV is already here, just not M$'s...

[Tanmi-Daiow]

I'm sorry Microsoft, but the copyright to the name IPTV is already owned by Iowa Public Television. They're gonna have to find a new name or face the wrath of hordes of not-for-profit Iowans, myself among them.

Best place for info on IPTV

[Anonymous Coward]

 
I have found the best place for information on IPTV is at

        http://www.iptv.org/

It is a most useful site when trying to find something to see on TV
and has been around for years.

Hmmm, wonder if "MS" has checked into the trademark ownership of IPTV?

Buffering...

[StikyPad]

instant channel changes

Translation: Buffering... 5%.. 18%.. 39%.. 63%.. 72%........... 10%..!

Acromyn Confusion

[Anonymous Coward]

Why does Microsoft care about Iowa Public Television (IPTV)? (Four channels of public broadcasting fundraisers, Hurray!)

Microsoft Innovated Nothing!

[dream_team34]

Before you guys go congratulating Microsoft for innovating the concept of IPTV or allowing telephone companies to deliver telivision services... other companies have been doing this for years before Microsoft got into the game. Check out the following companies: http://www.minervanetworks.com/ http://www.myrio.com/ http://www.orca.tv/ http://www.tutsys.com/ http://www.skystream.com/ Hundreds of phone companies in the US TODAY, and more in other countries, already offer IPTV to their customers... and no, not using Microsoft's software. There are already companies that are offering these "advanced" services, which alot of people on here thinks Microsoft innovated.

in hopes of china

[nihaopaul]

Microsoft hopes its Internet protocol television system (IPTV) will also be used in India, China and other developing countries, where it could provide education and government services as well as entertainment via the television.

china? with its internet addiction? will they require you to wear the head gear also while watching tv?

also, allow people to watch tv that isn't controlled 100% by the government? ok they thinking about messing with the chinese now the'r done with the americans.

Bell Ontario has this in beta already

[Anonymous Coward]

Talked with the "wiring" guy who installed my adsl (moved)... he's part of the internal beta at Bell (Ontario) for its IPTV solution. Running with 12 channels and working fine apparently.

Re:IP/TV is a registered trademark of Cisco System

[karl.auerbach]

For years? Not to brag, but we had IP/TV® running in 1995. We got it up to DVD quality sometime in the 1997/98 time frame.

We used IP multicast so we didn't end up burying the net with one-stream of packets per receiver.

As for the trademark - anybody who uses "IPTV" to label their product is taking a risk.

Re:I can see it - but let me get this straight

[EminenceFront]

So, Fair Use enables people to record shows on a VCR to have and to watch at their choosing... Then the TIVO completely alters our way of viewing television by not only allowing us to TIME SHIFT, but also eliminate the advertising. In a country where TIVO's have replaced VCR's and networks (and thus advertisers) can see that 97% of the people watching are fast-forwarding through the spots (except for movie trailers and really cool commercials that look even cooler in fast motion - thus attracting your interest) why would advertisers want to promote a show... And where, now, does the network get revenue from... five-second annoying pop-ups at the start of each act break in a show? Well, I paid $40.00 at Costco to watch the entire first season of 'LOST' (after I heard all the buzz)... So does a network now charge me $2.00 for each episode I watch in the "broadcast" window before DVD? (Broadcast meaning, podcast, bittorrent, tv, IPTV, etc) And if Fair Use leads to widespread VCR use, leads to time-shifting, leads to TIVO and ultimate time -shifting, leads to altered television viewing habits, leads to miniscule advertising revenue, leads to alternate delivery, payment and advertising revenue methods... How does the next 'LOST' become the next communal phenomenon if there is no easy way to let us know about it? ... maybe Really Cool Spots that play well in fast motion? Paid TV anyone? (Austin Powers was right... "BBC 1, BBC 2, BCC 3, BBC 4, BBC 5, BBC 6, BBC 7, BBC Heaven'"

Ahem wrong again

[shareme]

Ths is from soemone that contributes to IPTV proejcts in the FOSS community: 1. IPTV is not MS 'owned'! IPTV is an independent standard 2. Its not technical implementations that is slowing or speedign up deployment its the content rpoviders refusing to adopt 'internet' style free-wheeling acceptance of content form all producers. Cable companeis tend to want to monopolize their content so as to prevent outsiders from competing.. Wittness the death tol of DeviceTop.com owned by Espial. Cable companei sin the USA did not want to hear from outside content providers/developrs and thus the plan by Espial to get 3rd party content into USA via IPTV failed due to cable wanting to monopolize and lock out developers to avoid facing competition.

2nd choice - at best

[Tom]

I work for a major, major telecom company.

After a careful and very extensive evaluation taking almost a year, the microsoft solution was rejected by both technical and administrative decision makers, because it falls short of competitors.

As you can see from this, M$ IPTV has been on the market for over a year already.

I'm certain others will find the same results. So I wonder how much of this is just artificially created hype to create more sales, because for all I know they are barely worth mentioning so far.

Paradigms lost

[StrawberryFrog]

Broadcast TV is seriously threatened, and is only just realising it.

I have TV on demand already, in the form of 24+ hours of unwatched files on my home PC's hard drive. I'd download more but that would just be pointless, I don't have the time to watch it. Speaking to co-workers I realise that this is not so very unusual. Sure it's not mainstream, but give it a few years. I don't think there's any way to really stop this short of shutting down the internet. All this flailing around to find a business model and a set-top-box that will fix last century's media paradigm to compete with the free online equivalent of swap meets is amusing in a pathetic kind of way.

So - broadcast once, let the viewers rip to a file and download forevermore? Or will future TV show makers upload the files to the net themselves? Will this be the end of big-budget shows? Is that a bad thing?

Correction: MS has been *fighting* IPv6 for years

[Anonymous Coward]

Correction. You mean that M$ has been fighting adoption of IPV6 for years, don't you? MS applications and systems have been way behind in that regard.

12 years and more than $10 billion.

[Martin Spamer]

10 Billion dollars and 12years ?

And they still dont have a workable product.

I worked at (and designed the software for) Kingston Interactive Television where we developed an iDTV, VOD and Internet system in less than 2 years. The whole project cost less than 30m and that includes the MAN & DSLAM's for 30k installations and the actual installation in 10,000 home. We where the first to launch this anywhere in the world, it actually worked and not a MS-box in sight. It was all bases on ARM STB's, Sun Application Servers, NCube Video servers, Linux for Internet and Tanberg MPEG Transcoders.

Not PCs, set-top boxes.

[aclidiere]

Arguably, the design of new IP set-top box are very close to PCs. However, the boxes on which most of Microsoft's partners are working will never be used as PCs. They won't even host a hard-drive.

During the last IBC convention this September in Amsterdam, Microsoft revealed their relationship with set-top box manufacturers.

I've seen Microsoft TV run on a box that for sure was not a regular PC. It was slow, but it was acceptable.

A large IPTV deployment is hundreds of thousands of set-top boxes. It is important to bring the cost of the boxes down, not too much above $100. (That means already tens of millions of dollars, solely for the price of the boxes!) There is no IPTV without cheap set-top boxes.

The problem facing Microsoft today is that noone wants a proprietary solution. Microsoft also seems to have problems with scaling their nice features to work for a very large amount of users. Make sure you read: MS's IPTV strategy in tatters

Sounds like UK's Digital TV

[Anonymous Coward]

We have all of this stuff already in the UK on Digital TV.

Is America playing catch-up?

My digital PVR has two receivers so it can record one channel while watching another. I can also download applications that run on the PVR as well as the standard applications that allow multiple channels on the screen.

funny

[suezz]

how the article never mentions the drm that is involved.
that is the only reason the mpaa choose microsoft because they sold them drm

so now they tell you what to do with the movies you are paying for.

I see flop. big big flop. I already have this with a tv card in my pc why would I buy this and I don't have drm and so I can make as many copies of tv shows as I want. but now we are going to get drm shoved down our throats because that is how the movie industry is going to sell their product. they want our homes to be just like going to the movie show. you pay everytime you watch the movie.

have fun folks - I won't be buying.

Apple's hold on their DRM format sucks

[backslashdot]

Anyone can make DRM protected files according to MS specs. Without having to pay royalties or licensing. And if you download their SDK and have the dev environment.. it's mad easy to do on a large scale. Again, no royalties to Microsoft.

Apple is refusing to even LICENSE Fairplay, let alone allow others to make files protected by it. If you wish to make a song and sell it on your own website (and have DRM protection that's recognized by iPod) you can't. Sure you can make it available as MP3, but many artists dont wish to do that. You have to sell it on iTunes for 99cents. Well what if you want to sell it for 25 cents on your band website? Microsoft makes such things possible, but since iPod only understands the Fairplay DRM scheme, it's not a a viable option for anybody.

Regardless of whether you support the idea of DRM, I dont see how people blindly lend their support to Apple. Make the iPod DRM free! Or use at least don't use a monopolistic propreitery DRM format. I understand everyone on here hates DRM. I hate DRM even more. But how come Apple is getting a free pass utilizing it?

There are ways to get non iTunes purchased music on the iPod but they are all inconvenient hacks that strip DRM.

Alternatives to Windows exist but that doesnt mean Mirosoft isn't monopolistic. Apple has historically been very closed (no mac clones) and now they are unfairly monopolizing the online music industry. They are using the popularity of the iPod player to lock people into using iTunes, which in turn helps them sell iPods because the purchased music must be copied to iPods rather than other mp3 players (without using a hack). If they had confidence in their mp3 player they would open up the Fairplay format and allow competition in music sales.

Makes a change...

[Syphex]

I suppose it makes a change to a crystal ball.

Its all about content

[crovira]

As long as content is used as filler for advertising, I see no compelling reason to buy in.

I'd hate to think that all that expensive infrastructure is being used to pimp "2000 Flushes".

Broadcast as a business model is dying.

outdated centralized thinking

[idlake]

We don't need an IPTV "platform"; standard video codecs, RSS, and (optionally) torrent are sufficient. The software needed for that is widely available and in open source form.

The only thing that's left to be done is to give it a simple user interface for publishing and for subscribing. On the server side, content management systems like Mambo, Drupal, and Broadcastmachine make publishing easy. On the client side, systems like Videora and DTV address the problem.

Microsoft is late to the party, as usual. However, their usual approach of buying up everything and making it proprietary won't work anymore.

I want my IPTV

[Anonymous Coward]

UltimateTV >> Tivo >> cable DVR
IPTV > UltimateTV ==> IPTV >> Tivo >> cable DVR

release(IPTV) satification(buy(IPTV)) > satisfaction(buy(Tivo)) + satisfaction(buy(wait(IPTV)))

release(IPTV) >= threshold ==> satification(buy(IPTV)) satisfaction(buy(Tivo)) + satisfaction(buy(wait(IPTV)))

querry: evalutate(release(IPTV))
querry: evaluate(satisfaction(IPTV) - satisfation(WindowsMediaCenterPC))

IPTV is already real

[atkulp]

My parents-in-law are using IPTV in rural Wisconsin now (got it about six months ago). For $40/month they get about 80 channels. It's basically a last mile solution where TV is compressed to digital format, then sent via DSL to the home where there is a Motorola (not 100% positive on the brand) IPTV decoder box. Similar with DirecTV, you have a second or two pause when changing channels, and IMO the compression artifacts, especially in high lateral motion, but also with more noticable quantization across most scenes, are very obvious. It has a channel guide, pay-per-view (they don't use it though), and pretty normal digital TV features. The box has an ethernet jack and a/v outputs (s-video and composite). They also included a router with the deal and they get their home connection from the same router. Of course, being IP-based, there's no reason why a PC client couldn't be made to watch true TV on your desktop, but I'm guessing they tie it down to MAC address, encryption, and other silly protections. It's kind of funny since it doesn't look any better than shows that I record on Media Center in Fair quality and watch on my TV.

The problem is, it take about two minutes to turn on from a cold boot (yikes!), it locks up sometimes (yes, they actually need to reboot their set-top box!), and it is completely scheduled programming. Based on previous posts, it looks like most people are equating IPTV with on-demand, which is certainly a possibility, but publish/subscribe streaming is the dominant model now. If TV operators truly change to an on-demand model it would deeply impact viewing habits, but not necessarily for the better. If nothing else, on-demand would make sense as a supplement to scheduled. The shared-experience cultural aspect of shows being on a certain day at a certain time is often what fuels their success. Who would even discover many shows if it was purely based on user selection?

I realize that what my parents-in-law have is early technology (though it's the only "cable" offering in their small -- 300 people -- town ), but it isn't at its potential yet. With on-demand to supplement, improved compression, and better platform stability, it can be a contender.

Over the Internet?

[caudron]

IPTV is about delivering an A/V signal using IP, not about delivering an A/V signal over the Internet. There's a world of difference. Major companies are already experimenting with it in selected markets now, and NOT over the Internet. IPTV is deleivered over existing cable lines.

It's biggest benefit---and I cannot BELEIVE the summary doesn't make mention of it---is the bandwidth savings. Right now, cable providers are hitting a brickwall with respect to bandwidth. They simply cannot deliever much more HDTV becuase they haven't got a big enough pipe. Remember that with exosting cable systems, the pipe is streaming every channel all the time, whether or not you are watching it. It's your tuner that selects the signal that you request from that mess...it's like trying to drink from a firehose.

The promise of IPTV, and like it or not, Microsoft did a good thing here, is that you only receive the signal you request. If you are watching channel 10, then the only channel on the pipe to your home is channel 10.

With that innovation in deleivery, cable companies can start offering a full line up of HDTV (much more than the paltry few channels they offer currently) without feart that they will run out of bandwidth.

And yes, you can also watch multiple channels and change channels instantly and all that other stuff that isn't nearly as important as the bandwidth savings.

IP Multicast at ISPs

[AtomicJake]

Alle responses of the parent poster are correct. It is true that IP Multicast routing causes RAM problems when allowed globally.

However, two more issues need to be solved before ISPs will allow IP Multicast from other sources than their own:

1) Billing: Live media streams in Multicast can take considerable ressources in the ISPs network. Who should be billed: The sender or the receivers? And how (it must be much cheaper than the equivalent number of unicast streams, but how much)?

2) Jamming: While security is a whole subject for itself in Multicast, the biggest problem is jamming: Everybody can easily jam a multicast session by sending on the same multicast address. This must be solved before IP Multicast makes any sense in a commerical world. [In today's closed IPTV environments this is solved by only routing IP Multicast streams in one direction and from known (own) sources; in an open environment where everybody can be a sender, this is no longer an option.]

Re:IP Multicast at ISPs

[Wesley Felter]

I hope that the billing problem will eventually by "solved" by the rapidly dropping price of backbone transport: just don't bill it.

Multicast jamming has been solved with single-source multicast (SSM).