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Do you have any views on the increasing convergence of devices, and the development of the ‘Home Hub’?
It’s an area of interest to Microsoft, and we can say that we will be demonstrating some of our developments in this area at some forthcoming events. We will be at a Royal Television Society event with BT on the 16th and 17th of September in Cambridge, where we will be demonstrating our IPTV project with BT, the BT Livetime initiative and also IP over DVBH with Arqiva.
We will also be presenting similar demonstrations at the IBC which runs from the 9th to the 13th September 2005, and at the European Commissions "TV Without Frontiers" conference on the 20th to the 22nd of September 2005 in Liverpool. We are also hoping to be able to demonstrate the Xbox 360 at this event.
Currently, the jury is still out on exactly which device will become the ‘home hub’, and what features it will have. The important thing is to give people solid platforms that can be utilised in a wide variety of ways. People don’t just want one ‘island’ in the home, they want the ability to be able to use their content across all the devices in the home. Clearly, the use of IP based content is key to this.
What sort of connectivity devices are Microsoft developing?
Our connectivity product is the Media Centre Extender. These devices allow consumers to connect their Media Centre PC via wireless, over a home network or wired approaches to televisions and other devices, so they can extend the complete Media Centre experience to any room of the house. In future scenarios, there be the use of media throughout the home and across different devices.
The Media Centre, which runs a third party application called the Gallery Player. Media Player is effectively a technology that allows users to display their photographs, but Gallery Player takes it one stage further. Subscribers can utilise this feature currently access to art collections that we have permission to use from galleries all over the world. When you are not using TV’s for viewing, the art images can be shifted around the screens in a cycle.
This is clearly just the start of a variety of different ways in which content will be used and ported across multiple devices in the home. The future for IPTV is an exciting one, full of potential. It won’t be without its challenges, but we feel that at the heart of creating a convincing service will be the recognition of consumer’s expectations for the use of the content that they have at their disposal. NB: Media Centre Edition (MCE) is available now. Media Centre Extender will be launching in the UK later this year. ********** For more information about Microsoft TV, please download this pdf file MSTV_IPTV_Datasheet%20010405.pdf (1.76 MB)
You can also visit http://www.microsoft.com/tv
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