Xbox TV Launch Planned Before End of Year 81
An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft has confirmed plans to launch its TV service over Xbox Live by this holiday season. Negotiations with content partners are still underway, but options for live TV will include both news and sports. 'Microsoft believes the key differentiator between Xbox as a TV platform and the sea of failed competitors will be its voice and motion search tool. Utilizing the Kinect attachment, users will be able to navigate through content with voice commands. The search function will be powered by Bing.' The company also wants to tie Xbox Live's social experience into viewing video content. Steve Ballmer said, 'You should have any entertainment you want with all the people you care about, really simply and on any screen.'"
Ooo. Voice commands! (Score:4, Interesting)
Yeah. That'll make for a killer app. After all, voice command has been promised for general computing for what, 20 years now?
And as good as software like Dragon is, it's still never been good enough to include in a "standard" desktop from any vendor.
Some people download TV. Some people PVR/Tivo it. Some settle for a standard cable/satellite feed.
But I have never heard anyone complain that they couldn't use voice commands to control their viewing.
I predict another epic fail...
The Next Xbox. (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm getting the feeling the next Xbox will just be a dumb Kinect terminal that connects to an OnLive-like service, or potentially an outright buyout of OnLive itself.
They can put out a box for $50, they get to do that whole cloud thing they like so much, all running on their own servers, collecting subscription fees, no need to give those pesky users access to the game data files, no need to compete with Sony on who has the most powerful hardware or lose face by licensing their optical media format.
And if the country you're in doesn't have Microsoft infrastructure you're probably all dirty pirates anyway and not worth bothering with, right?
Personally I wouldn't like this to happen one bit, but it seems to make a lot of sense to me from Microsoft's point of view.
XBMC4XBOX (Score:2, Interesting)
http://www.xbmc4xbox.org/
Lets me watch all the TV I want on my XBox...