Source: blog.voipsupply.com

Will the Microsoft Xbox 360 Support IPTV?

After the Microsoft Keynote at CES 2007 it was erroneously reported that the Xbox 360 would support any IPTV content. This happened when the Microsoft presenters announced that the newer IPTV features they were demonstrating were done on an Xbox 360. This lead to those in attendance and later those posting on message boards to believe that the Xbox 360 would support IPTV for any internet connected Xbox 360.

In the days after this announcement it became clear that this is not the case. In Microsoft’s day after press release it was clearly stated that “IPTV on Xbox 360™ is expected to be available to consumers by holiday season 2007 and will be offered by providers that are deploying TV services over broadband networks based on the IPTV Edition software platform.” For Xbox owners in the United States this means that unless you live in an area where AT&T is rolling out IPTV, then you are out of luck. At the end of 2006 AT&T had a total of 3000 subscribers signed up for its U-verse IPTV offering.

On top of that AT&T has seen a serious slow down in its rollout of IPTV due to glitches with the IPTV Edition software.

How come Microsoft does not roll out an IPTV service? They have been very successful with the Xbox live service and would surely lead to more Xbox sales than the limited offering we will see through AT&T. Of course all the MSO’s would have a conniption fit that such a bandwidth intensive application was being carried on their pipelines. If I were the head of a MSO my first thought would be NET NEUTRALITY BE DAMNED! Will IPTV ever see the type of competition that we are currently seeing in the VoIP market? As a consumer that currently pays way too much for his cable television I truly hope so.