“If Internet-based video is the wave of the future, many of us are already drenched with options including such as YouTube, Joost and Apple’s iTunes. But today, Microsoft is making a play to have its own video download service added to the mix,” Nicholas Carlson reports for InternetNews.
“During his keynote speech at the DigitalLife show here in New York, Microsoft executive Joe Belfiore will pitch Microsoft’s new, free streaming video service, called Internet TV,” Carlson reports. “Going into beta on Sept. 28, Microsoft’s Internet TV service will enable users to stream content from MSN Video. It will also offer more than 100 hours of additional, ad-supported content, including television shows like ‘Arrested Development,’ full-length music concerts, movie trailers, news from MSNBC and sports from FOX Sports.”
“Microsoft Internet TV is designed for both the TV and PC screen, the company said in a statement. The service’s video is optimized for broadband, and will be compatible with Microsoft and third-party “media extenders” devices for Windows Media Center,” Carlson reports. “These devices — a new crop of which Belfiore will highlight during the show — wirelessly connect a TV with a PC, delivering TV, PVR, movies, pictures, music and online services to any television set in a home. The products support connections to PCs running Windows Media Center in Windows Vista and generally, Windows XP Media Center Edition.”
“Apple Inc. announced its own $299 PC-to-TV device, Apple TV, only a few months before,” Carlson reports. “When Apple launched Apple TV last year, Phil Leigh, analyst with Inside Digital Media, said at the time that such products answered a consumer desire to not just download Internet video, but to watch in on their televisions. Today, however, Leigh described the Microsoft effort as, ‘an incremental step in the right direction, I don’t see it as much more than that.'”
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “ChrissyOne” for the heads up.]
Yawn.