Xbox To Get Live TV and Massive VOD Update

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."

For the record, Sky is evil

[Anonymous Coward]

If you take all the evil US megacorps and add them together, that's the kind of evil we have in Sky.

Nothing good can come from this. Xbox owners beware. :-(

Global or just UK only?

[tero]

From TFA: "Millions of Xbox 360 owners in Britain and Ireland will be able to watch live programing such as Premier League soccer and movies following a deal with pay-TV group BSkyB"

That's not very "global" to me - what about the millions of Xbox users outside UK who'd also want to pay and see Premier League and other stuff on their Xbox? And yeah, that was rhetorical question, I know we're hosed until the "global" train arrives on our little local station.

So, in other words

[Anonymous Coward]

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

mod -1k for defending MS

[Anonymous Coward]

I have to admit, even thought I am not a fan of microsoft corporation, they did get it right with the 360. It's a fantastic console. Even though I hate Windows and other microsoft software, I have to commend them for the 360.

And although not related to the 360, I find their mice and keyboards fantastic also. The intellimouse 1.1 I think is the best mouse I have ever had...

Maybe they should just quit software and move to hardware only because that seems to be a strength of theirs (except the Zune...)

cue trolls replying 'linux>windows' without having read my post properly

Whats the catch?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm waiting for more details before I start even considering this a good idea; my monies on it requiring a Sky Broadband ADSL connection...

Another Layer of DRM! Hoorah!

[NickFortune]

So for all the folks who can't watch the TV because the XBox is plugged into it, now have a slution. They can watch the TV through the XBox, with an added layer of DRM, customer profiling and what have you added in, I have no doubt.

Can't really see this one changing the world, somehow...

Re:Availability?

[Ciggy]

A bit of news for you...only the Republic of Ireland (Eire) became independent in 1922

UK is "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland" in full.

So at a guess, "Britain and Ireland" can either mean "UK and Eire" (interpreting Ireland as "the whole of Ireland, Northern & Republic") or UK (interpreting "Ireland" as "Northern Ireland"); Perhaps we should ask Reuters.

waiting for falling shoes to impact earth.

[senorpoco]

Neither Sky not Microsoft have ever given away for free what they could charge people for.

Re:Also getting live TV

[Anonymous Coward]

I hate the commercials on goatse TV

based on Microsoft Mediaroom middleware?

[Mulder3]

I am pretty sure this will be based on that stupid Microsoft iptv middleware named Microsoft Mediaroom(formerly known as Microsoft TV IPTV edition) witch is already ported to Xbox360. Mediaroom is full of DRM, not based on OpenIPTV Forum standards, doesn't scale well(while it is based on multicast, it uses unicast heavily) and is a real PITA for developers( you have three choices to develop apps on the platform: XHTML/JS/CSS running on Tasman rendering engine, with was the renderer used in IE for Mac witch is real slow and very limited, you can also use a stupid XML declarative language(called Mediaroom Presentation Foundation) and RDP on a remote terminal server (yes, remote desktop)! With better choices in middlewares, i just don't know how operators keep choosing this piece of crap middleware

Re:So, in other words

[Cheeko]

Indeed most of the motorola boxes Comcast uses are in fact pricey, fragile pieces of crap with a garbage in house OS Comcast uses to replace the Moto OS.

So the comparison is really around volume, and yeah the 360 is louder, but I'll take that given the chance to watch Sky or other things my cable box doesn't give me.

Most cable companies subsidize the cable boxes, renting them to customers as a fee. If I could own one and buy one of better quality than the ones the cable companies provide I'd do that in a second, and expect it to run a couple of hundred.