Microsoft Ready To "Take On'' Google and Apple TV

Antisyzygy writes "Microsoft is getting ready to offer an internet television solution of its own, and will demo a TV box this week at the Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas." The rumor is under $200 putting it more on price point with GoogleTV at the moment.

Comments

Sure

[DurendalMac]

Once again MS arrives late to the party with an offering that likely won't offer enough to be competitive. Good ol' MS: Reactive rather than proactive.

Re:Sure

[ThePromenader]

Oooooo! I can't wait! ZuneTv!

Re:Sure

[RobertM1968]

Once again MS arrives late to the party with an offering that likely won't offer enough to be competitive. Good ol' MS: Reactive rather than proactive.

Not entirely accurate. Microsoft has went to this party before, and been "kicked out" before. This is just their most recent attempt. WebTV (launched 1996, bought by MS in 1997) being one such attempt. Followed by Windows Media Center. Followed by a "new and (un)improved" WebTV, followed by updated Windows Media Center, followed by even more Windows Media Center releases (in total, since and including launch, release/versions 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, Vista, Windows 7, and TV Pack 2008), xBox Media Center somewhere in that timeline, Portable Media Center for things like the Zune and so on.

Maybe this time they will succeed. The point above isn't slamming Microsoft. My point is you aren't quite correct in blaming Microsoft for being reactive instead of proactive. They were one of the first companies that saw the worth of this marketplace (even if they didnt figure out how to capitalize on it). Often it's hard to START a marketplace. Now, Microsoft has the advantage of seeing what's working for other companies in this marketplace. Thus my point is, it is NOT fair to claim they are reactive in this situation. They saw the potential gains of such a scenario when they purchased WebTV and later released WMC. They simply didnt know how to approach the market properly.

Now, it (if they want to succeed) will be a combination of their previous proactive attempts at Online TV plus a reactive look at ensuring their next offering addresses the needs, concerns and desires of those consumers who enjoy and use GoogleTV, AppleTV and NetFlix.

Further in Microsoft's defense, the technology has advanced light years since WebTV, making this marketplace a lot more attractive to the disaster that the initial WebTV boxes provided. And one step even further in that direction of defending them (at least for WebTV), besides the fact that the hardware was light years behind today's, WebTV and it's nightmare was an acquisition. MS did indeed try to rectify a lot of the issues with it, and in many cases definitely did so. But still ran into hardware limitations. Yes, there were still mistakes MS made in not judging what the majority of the marketplace wanted or needed, but my point is, it still would have been unlikely for them to succeed at THAT time (due to hardware and bandwidth limitations), even if they avoided their other mistakes.

Re:Sure

[h4rr4r]

What they need is to get their heads out of their asses. NEWSFLASH ASSHOLES: the computer that I watch hulu on is connected to my HDTV over HDMI and there is nothing you can do about it. It reports Firefox because it is firefox, just modified so it has a reasonable 10 foot interface.

Re:Sure

[jedidiah]

This is a crowded area that's getting more crowded by the day. Microsoft's half-hearted attempts thusfar have done nothing to slow the rest of the market down and likely won't in the future. Microsoft simply doesn't have the mojo that it once did. Microsoft spewing vapor doesn't impress as much as it used to.

The more competition, the better

[mlts]

If MS has something like all-you-can-watch video similar to the all-you-can-download subscription system for the Zune, it might be something worth considering.

However, why does MS need a TV set top box? They already have one... the XBox 360.

Re:Dear Microsoft,

[BitZtream]

I'm guessing you've never used Windows Media Center with XBox (old or 360) as an extender.

It is simply put the best DVR system on the planet for the home.

You get complete control over your TV, you get the ability to burn to DVD as DVD movies anything you record so you can use it elsewhere. You can archive your videos if you want.

I have the ability to record or watch live 8 HD or SD streams at a time while watching them on the local display, another Windows PC or any of my XBox 360s. Or I can watch any combination of live and recorded across my systems. Or listen to my music, watch my home videos.

The interface is fast and looks good. It supports plugins so you can do stuff like commercial removal if you want, but its almost pointless to bother with since the 'skip forward' feature is exactly 30 seconds and makes commercial skipping almost instinctual with the remote in hand.

The only thing that prevents WMC from being perfect is the fact that cable companies encrypt their content rather than filter it from entering the home so for premium channels you need STBs from your provider. My solution is to simply ignore those channels, and the cable co can ignore the money they could have had in the process.

In short, I'm sure MS is perfectly capable of pulling this off, they already have, you just haven't heard about it before now.

Take a look at WMC, it makes others DVRs look like a joke.

And before anyone tries to mention MythTV ... don't. Seriously, its only useful if you would rather spend your time screwing with it to get it to work at all rather than watching recorded shows. Forget about using it like a normal TV, its architecture makes the lag in user input to system response completely unbearable. Its a joke all on its own.

NO. NO, GOD, NO

[ShooterNeo]

From a Microsoft stock holder : NO. NO, NO, NO.

Microsoft does ONE thing well : it hires thousands of competent programmers and it makes usable software. There are many critics but the stuff isn't all bad and they do try to improve it. It SELLS the software to users, and because it has so many customers, the revenue vastly exceeds the cost of paying thousands of programmers. They have a swanky corporate headquarters with all the free soda you can chug, and many many 6-figure jobs.

It's failed miserably at EVERYTHING ELSE IT HAS TRIED. As far as I know, it has not made ONE DOLLAR OF NET PROFIT ON ANYTHING ELSE.

It's wasted billions of dollars trying to compete as an online portal and as a search engine. A company crammed to the brim with top CS grads and extremely good custom software SPECIALIZES in search and basically nothing else. Expecting to ever beat them and make more money is a fool's errand.

It's wasted more billions, with little or NO net profits on gaming consoles. (MAYBE it's finally breaking even on that, but I doubt it)

And 50 other assorted ventures that never made a dime that we don't hear about.

Software is STILL a good idea. How about the executives pay dividends and focus on doing their core business WELL.

XBox 360? MCE?

[SpryGuy]

They already have Media Center for Windows, the XBox 360, and Media Center Exteders... they're going to add something ELSE to the mix? Never mind Zune.

What is it with Microsoft always just throwing layers and crap out there, making things confusing and complicated. Can they ever stop and think something through, and put out something that is cohesive, simple to use and understand, and useful?