Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates kicked off the Consumer Electronics Show tonight for the last time, preceded by the customary funny lead-in video, which this year featured cameos of Jon Stewart, Hillary Clinton, Al Gore and Barack Obama (who, when Bill phones him, is confused as to which Bill is calling. Obama's first guess: Bill Shatner...very funny.) The real news in Gates' keynote (video here) came not from the Microsoft co-founder himself but from Robbie Bach, President of Microsoft's Entertainment & Devices Division, who will assume some of Gates' tradtional CES duties in the future and who unveiled, among other things, a series of deals with ABC Television, the Disney Channel and MGM to supply a wealth of on-demand TV programs and movies to Microsoft's Xbox Live service.
Whatever else Microsoft does in the video entertainment world, the Xbox is the software giant's secret weapon, a trojan horse capable of bypassing cable, satellite and telco companies to deliver video entertainment into the nation's living rooms. The Xbox Live service already offers thousands of hours of content from CBS, MTV Networks, Paramount Pictures, Turner Broadcasting System, Ultimate Fighting Championship, and Warner Bros. Home Entertainment . (See here for current TV and movie line-ups.)
With the addition of Disney-ABC Television Group and MGM content, the line-up of on-demand content available to the 10 million and growing Xbox Live users is even more robust...and more threatening to traditional TV providers. The new content deal covers 500 hours of hit shows including "Lost," "Grey’s Anatomy," "Ugly Betty" and "Desperate Housewives." New episodes of these and other hit shows will be available through Xbox Live the day following their initial on-air transmissions.
More important than the wide variety of progams available through Xbox Live is the fact that relevant programs and films will be available in high-definition format, a key competitive differentiator given that cable systems are constrained in terms of how many HD channels they can offer consumers. Instead, cable companies promote how much HD on-demand content they make available.
Microsoft's Bach contends that with the addition of the new content providers, Xbox Live will rule the roost when it comes to HD on-demand content. "Xbox Live will offer twice as much HD on-demand content as any cable operator," he said during the opening keynote.
Although widely considered to be a rival to Apple's iTunes service, which also offers TV shows and movies from a range of providers, Xbox Live is a far more dynamic video outlet given that Xbox 360 units are capable of drawing content from the Internet for viewing directly on the TV set. iTunes, on the other hand, can offer video for viewing only on computers, handheld devices and, in certain cases, via TV using Apple TV units.
Microsoft is moving ahead on other online video fronts -- Bach announced a joint Microsoft-NBC Universal initiative, under which the two companies will offer NBCOlympics.com on MSN, the official U.S. online home of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. Powered by Microsoft's Silverlight technology, the new site will deliver 3,000 hours of live and on-demand coverage of the global games, with coverage to include even the least popular events.
The Redmond giant's least successful video-related product, its Mediaroom set-top box-based operating system, is now in one million devices around the globe, Bach said. Hoping to add to the allure of the troubled software system, Microsoft has added a new feature called DVR Anywhere, which allows customers to watch recorded programs on multiple TVs in the home.
In another bid likely to be viewed as a competitive response to Apple, Microsoft announced that Samsung Electronics will support Extender for Windows Media Center, which allows video content on Windows Vista-based PCs with Windows Media Center to be routed to TV sets using wired or wireless home networks. The pact with the TV set and DVR maker is aimed, in part, at leveraging Windows Media Center Internet TV, an ad-supported entertainment channel that offers content pulled from MSN Video.
Microsoft's Extender technololgy is also surely viewed as a direct rival to Apple's Apple TV device. But, unlike the Xbox, neither Microsoft's extender technology nor Apple's TV product have gained much traction in the marketplace.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 10:24 PM | Print | Comments (0)
Blogs We Read
