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Xbox To Get Live TV and Massive VOD Update
CNETNate writes "It's a global first for Microsoft, and massive news for Xbox owners. Redmond and the largest pay TV service in the UK — Sky, owned in part by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp — has tied a deal that brings simulcast TV, sports, entertainment shows, pay-per-view movies and back catalogue television to the Xbox 360. It's an entirely streamed service, offering no download-to-own content, and partly rivals the BBC iPlayer, which is available on UK PlayStation consoles and the Nintendo Wii. The service will go live later in the year at no cost to existing subscribers, and screenshots show it fits in seamlessly with the Xbox Live interface."
Launching soon, live goatse TV channel, and goatse on "demand".
Is this UK only? Seems that way from the articles, but the summary doesn't mention anything. If it is, that's good news for them, but kinda useless for the rest of us.
If you take all the evil US megacorps and add them together, that's the kind of evil we have in Sky.
Nothing good can come from this. Xbox owners beware. :-(
My computer can do the same thing already!
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." --Mark Twain
Unlike in American Football/Handball, there's more to the world than the US. I assume ur a yank 'cos only a yank would say someting like that.
Xbox is a gaming console first announced 2000, discontinued 2005-2006... Why does everybody call Xbox360 for Xbox?
It's a heck to find information about the regular xbox theese days... Everything called just "xbox" is the new one...
i dont trust Rupert Murdoch with my TV programming
Are there any plans for getting it out of the Kingdom?
This seems to me to be a very dumb idea.
I don't know about others, but I for one avoid services tied to hardware that has a high likelihood of failure.
Anyone else remember Time Warner Cable's early digital / DVR boxes? The horribly twitchy ones made by Scientific Atlanta? Or Verizon's FiOS routers from hell / shitty set top boxes?
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it! --Longbottle
From TFA: "Millions of Xbox 360 owners in Britain and Ireland will be able to watch live programing such as Premier League soccer and movies following a deal with pay-TV group BSkyB"
That's not very "global" to me - what about the millions of Xbox users outside UK who'd also want to pay and see Premier League and other stuff on their Xbox? And yeah, that was rhetorical question, I know we're hosed until the "global" train arrives on our little local station.
You can now use an Xbox 360 as a really expensive, loud, and fragile cable box? Woohoo!
I have to admit, even thought I am not a fan of microsoft corporation, they did get it right with the 360. It's a fantastic console. Even though I hate Windows and other microsoft software, I have to commend them for the 360.
And although not related to the 360, I find their mice and keyboards fantastic also. The intellimouse 1.1 I think is the best mouse I have ever had...
Maybe they should just quit software and move to hardware only because that seems to be a strength of theirs (except the Zune...)
cue trolls replying 'linux>windows' without having read my post properly
I'm waiting for more details before I start even considering this a good idea; my monies on it requiring a Sky Broadband ADSL connection...
So for all the folks who can't watch the TV because the XBox is plugged into it, now have a slution. They can watch the TV through the XBox, with an added layer of DRM, customer profiling and what have you added in, I have no doubt.
Can't really see this one changing the world, somehow...
Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!
There's no way that "at no cost to existing subscribers" means this is going to be free to use; why would Sky undercut themselves?
I think it means that you won't have to pay anything to access the service (unlike, say, PlayTV which requires an outlay for the kit). Same as the downloadable films; any Live user can browse the service without having to pay, but it costs to actually download them.
I suppose it's too much to ask that MS sort out the constant.......... pauses........... when......... trying.......... to........... navigate........... NXE menus.......... as well?
Simulcast? Really? I'm a person that believes that speech evolves and there's a natural progression in language... but that doesn't excuse terrible marketing words. This neither flows off the tongue nor is intuitive. I mean, how do you even say it? Sim you'll cast? Sy mule cast? Sim ool cast? And what does it mean? Simulated broadcasting?
I know this is listed in some online dictionaries (I just checked), but really, words really ought to be meaningful before being accepted as "language."
And Sky and MS will probably want a week's wages to watch a half-hour programme.
...
Why do the likes of Sky, Virgin and the other online providers think I'll spend a fiver on a streamed, low quality DVD, when I can get the same content in the bargin bin in Tescos? The same content that I can lend, resell, rip,
This post contains benzene, nitrosamines, formaldehyde and hydrogen cyanide.
"It's an entirely streamed service, offering no download-to-own content"
Anyone remember the first series of The IT Crowd, streamed online only to the UK, WMV DRMed up one side and down the other. And on The Pirate Bay as a .avi file within minutes after each streamed episode was over?
Good times, good times!
Really, why do they bother? The stream will be intercepted somewhere inside the XBox, or fed from the XBox into a digital recorder or computer, converted to .avi and upped to TPB. all automatically.
Assuming, of course, the programming is worth it and is unavailable elsewhere.
Guaranteed! This comment 100% Anthrax free!
Any mention of the price anywhere? Because if I need to sign up to Sky to use this service, then it's not really solving anything. Personally I want access to a massive library of films and TV shows to watch on a pay-per-play basis, without any ties.
The thing that is still stunning me is that you'd think Sony, being the huge entertainment conglomerate that it is, would've been offering this already with the PS3. Yes; I know that you can rent movies from the Playstation Network, but there are two major flaws with that service,
1) It's not available outside of the US (I mean, why? Seriously, why? Is it European law or something?!)
2) It's too expensive.
I'm sure they'll do it eventually, but to be honest you'd be hard pressed to believe we're living in the 21st century sometimes...
THE HONOUR OF THE KNIGHTS - CC Licensed Sci-Fi Novel
I just hope there'll be some way to get setanta sports on this.
How can man live without old Celtic matches and the few bits of GAA they show?
Firstly, it's no additional cost to those already paying SKY and XBOX subscriptions. Everyone else needs to buy both subscriptions (not cheap).
Secondly, this is no different to the deal that Sony have had in place for the PSP and PS3 for several years. (and with PSN being free, only a Sky Subscrption is required).
http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2008/04/24/go_view_sony_sky_psp/
Wow, something is actually coming to Europe before the US? *Admires the winged swine passing by the window*
Seriously though, I find it extremely amusing that every USian commenting on this thread is up in arms about that. If you had any idea how many cool services don't make it past your borders because of stupid licensing agreements... Hulu, Pandora, Rhapsody, Amazon MP3 (some of them did make it to the UK, but not Ireland or the rest of Europe)
Neither Sky not Microsoft have ever given away for free what they could charge people for.
sky is part of fox and they did own direct tv at one time also sky does not have real vod on there boxes at this this time and direct tv does.
I am pretty sure this will be based on that stupid Microsoft iptv middleware named Microsoft Mediaroom(formerly known as Microsoft TV IPTV edition) witch is already ported to Xbox360. Mediaroom is full of DRM, not based on OpenIPTV Forum standards, doesn't scale well(while it is based on multicast, it uses unicast heavily) and is a real PITA for developers( you have three choices to develop apps on the platform: XHTML/JS/CSS running on Tasman rendering engine, with was the renderer used in IE for Mac witch is real slow and very limited, you can also use a stupid XML declarative language(called Mediaroom Presentation Foundation) and RDP on a remote terminal server (yes, remote desktop)! With better choices in middlewares, i just don't know how operators keep choosing this piece of crap middleware
IIRC Howard Hughe's company is the parent company of DirectTV; since the beginning. I don't ever remember Fox owning it, or Sky. A cursory examination of their Wikipedia article supports my recollection: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directtv#History
"Be prepared, son. That's my motto. Be prepared." --Joe Hallenbeck
I can't believe that this has not been tagged as skynet yet.
They've been promising IPTV support for a while, I'm surprised they actually implemented it somewhere. Now how about releasing for everyone cursed to use Microsoft's IPTV software?
So Microsoft takes on the cable providers and now all the content you want comes over X-Box with Sky. So the cable companies go under, and suddenly no one can connect with X-Box Live. Whoops!
I was watching Channel4 news just a moment ago and they mentioned the BBC's Canvas platform that rivals this setup. The interesting thing though - they mentioned open source. On the tele! Wow.
Ahem, it might not be open source, but it is an open standard, they specifically mentioned it being used for BC and ITV programmes, but also for any content provider - like newspapers or, well anyone. This is not the same as the Project Kangaroo that would broadcast programmes from the 3 main UK broadcasters, this is a content-delivery platform, not the content.
This blog talks about it in a bit more detail.
http://informitv.com/articles/2008/10/14/bbcopenscanvas/
Unusually BskyB has complained about having to suffer from competition!.
Is there any improvement in the area of support for subtexts in streaming media?