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."

Comments

Re:Availability?

[jools33]

Sky currently only operate in the UK - you can't buy SKY tv overseas - unless you have a UK based bank account - so I wonder if this means sky are becoming more global - or if this really is just content for the UK market only...and will Sony respond by cutting a deal with Viacom?

Re:Wow!

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, better cancel this then guys. Microsoft? Sky? Hi. Turns out that this isn't necessary. viyh's computer can do it already.

Global or just UK only?

[tero]

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.

Re:Global or just UK only?

[Richard_at_work]

What about the billions of computer users outside the US that would like access to Netflix, Hulu and every other VoD solution that seems to be geographically limited...?

In short - the reason you can't have the Sky content is the same reason we can't have Hulu content, and that is that Sky doesn't have the distribution license outside of its particular viewership area. Premier League TV rights are a huge huge business...

So, in other words

[Anonymous Coward]

You can now use an Xbox 360 as a really expensive, loud, and fragile cable box? Woohoo!

Really! You have to admire their optimism!

[Chris Tucker]

"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.

Price..?

[bhunachchicken]

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...