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Xbox To Get Live TV and Massive VOD Update

Posted by Soulskill on from the consoles-are-eating-the-rest-of-my-devices dept.

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."

5 of 124 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Availability? by jools33 · · Score: 4, Informative

    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?

  2. Re:Wow! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

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

  3. So, in other words by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

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

  4. Re:Global or just UK only? by Richard_at_work · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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...

  5. Really! You have to admire their optimism! by Chris+Tucker · · Score: 4, Interesting

    "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.

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