Friday, May 21, 2004
PC World - "Comcast Turns On Microsoft TV"
Posted by James Fee in "NEWS" @ 04:00 PM
"Comcast agreed to adopt Microsoft TV Foundation Edition 1.7 software for rollout to as many as 5 million subscribers, with an option to raise that number at a later date. Foundation Edition 1.7 lets cable companies and some other TV providers offer an interactive programming guide, navigation tools, and advanced features for capturing programs on digital video recorders."
Foundation Edition 1.7 is the latest Microsoft TV technology that helps Cable operators push information to Set Top Boxes (STBs). Using what Microsoft calls IPTV, Microsoft hopes to leverage technologies such as WMV9 and others to push video data over DSL and Cable lines to customers. This all in addition to typical DVR capabilities, the Microsoft STBs should be quite competitive. Check out the video of Microsoft TV and IPTV in action. I'm sure Motorola isn't too happy to see Microsoft in their backyard. It will be very interesting to see if this affects future Motorola smartphones and their OS of choice.