“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.
Today, Microsoft announces an amazing new technology called MStv. Watch all of your favorite Jerry Lewis Telethons on demand.
MS Internet TV, best to be seen on a Blue Screen (for chroma key?) of Death.
go ahead laugh now…..
…but when this comes out in 6 years (it will delay windows 7) and i am running it on my allinone from gateway who will be laughing?
well, ok, it will be you again, but still…
Where is this money COMING FROM???
Office.
And yes MS will be completely fsked when their only cash cow finally goes dry.
Just another sign of the Vistapocalypse.
<boom>
“Microsoft Internet TV is designed for both the TV and PC screen. The service’s video is optimized for broadband, and will be compatible with Microsoft and third-party “media extenders” devices for Windows Media Center. These devices wirelessly connect a TV with a PC, delivering TV, PVR, movies, pictures, music and online services to any television set in a home.”
And all will be chained – oops, I mean “connected” – by MS’s “always consumer-friendly” and “open standards” DRM.
MDN word: control. As in…MS will control all that you see and hear. They will control the vertical….
Shades of the Outer Limits control voice.
Does anyone know if this is in anyway related to Microsoft’s IPTV? Is it just IPTV servers running all of this?
MS will control all that you see and hear. They will control the vertical….
Not if the phone, cable, and power companies have anything to do with it. The servers and consumers gotta be connected somehow, and there’s plenty of evil that wants to own the connections.
Which brings up Apple, Google, and the immediate need for them to change the game via wireless broadband…
Cool! Now I will be able to watch Microsoft’s biggest seller
“Blue Screen of Death” on my 42″ Pioneer in luscious 720p!
MS too late to the party? I hope so but I see one caveat. Some people can’t do math, they are stupid.
Take an hour of regular programming and you get 45 minutes of show, or thereabouts, the other 15 minutes is advertising tax. Buy a show from Apple sans advertising and that fifteen minutes can be used for something more productive than watching adverts for totally inappropriate items. Its difficult to imagine one viewer saving less in that fifteen minutes than they do working for fifteen minutes but if they watch it twice, or more than one person watches then the cost pro rata is much less.
Too many people don’t realize the cost of free.
Sheesh! Microsoft was always derivative, but it seems like they are completely on autopilot these days. It’s like they have no R&D;at all, everything they produce is ripped from yesterday’s headlines.
It will also offer more than 100 hours of additional, ad-supported content…
More than 100 hours!!! Incredible!
I can’t wait for this to come out! Just need to upgrade my Windows Media Center to Vista Ultimate Medium-Rare Apartment Home Extended Plus Edition.
PeeCee’s ROCK! You can play a bizillion games or make greeting cards and print them to your photo printer!
<gag>
There you go. Microsoft has begun its campaign to cripple all of Apple efforts in the consumer entertainment market. This new system which I have the privilege of testing ( because Bill Gates and Ballmer thinks I’m a true MS lover ), will run on the new super secret UHF band, just under 3Ghz, below Microwave threshold.
That’s right. In a sheer move that will be remembered in this industry as pure genius, Bill Gates and Ballmer bought out the entire UHF band rights. Internet TV will now become a reality.
Now you can be Squirted while halfway around the planet. Imagine the possibilities. Everywhere you go, you can now be Squirted to your hearts content. I’m so happy that this is finally coming out. They should really have a Squirt Festival to mark this event.
Note to Microsoft-
you will NEVER be as lucky as you were when you launched Windows 3.1.
Your also ran approach just can’t hack it any more.
Good bye and good riddance.
The Ads is what will kill the M$ offering. Plus it will probably be crap.
Web based video is ideal for commercial free content. Rent or buy but no ads please.
MW brown!! – yuck
Ah, Internet TV from Microsofteevee…billions of channels and still nothing worth watching.
I can’t wait to see MSTV do their famous magic trick, invent something after it has been created.
Next up: Microsoft invents…the Internet Wheel…of torture.
The dying octopus tries to get one more arm into one more cookie jar.