Tuesday, October 17, 2006 | MANILA, PHILIPPINES
News
Seattle -- Microsoft Corp.’s decade-long push into television is notable for false starts, bold promises and failed investments, but the company hopes to finally move into the living room this year with a service delivered over high-speed Internet networks.
The success or failure of Microsoft’s Internet Protocol TV (IPTV) initiative could determine the fortunes of a number of telephone companies betting billions of dollars that the company can help them encroach on cable television operators’ home turf.
Unlike the video clips uploaded to Web sites like YouTube, which depend on normal consumer Internet connections, IPTV gets priority from phone companies, using the main highways or backbone of the Web to deliver television programs with nearly all the features available from cable or satellite TV.
Microsoft sees a future when its IPTV platform will make a television set not linked into an IP network seem as obsolete as a personal computer today without access to the Internet.
"Microsoft’s been successful signing up customers to date," said Michelle Abraham, principal analyst at research firm In-Stat. "But the large-sized, commercial deployments haven’t happened so there is a lot that is unknown."
Fourteen telephone carriers around the world have signed up for Microsoft’s IPTV platform including BT Group, Deutsche Telekom AG and AT&T, but none of those companies are selling the service yet beyond tests.
Microsoft hopes its IPTV software will eventually open up the TV to a world of services already on the Web, such as shopping, e-mail and instant messaging. With 1.6 billion televisions in the world, the opportunity is immense. For now, it is more interested in making sure it can match the features available in cable and satellite TV with some new bells and whistles, such as faster and easier channel and program surfing with picture-in-picture capability.
Microsoft has spent the last decade trying to crack the TV market with billion-dollar investments in cable and telecom companies, numerous attempts at moving into the set-top box with limited success and an acquisition of WebTV, a service to allow people to browse the Internet through a TV set.
None of these investments delivered the results Microsoft had hoped: a prominent place near the couch.
This time, Microsoft thinks the technology infrastructure and, more importantly, the consumers are finally ready for IPTV, an application that is one of the most complicated ever run on computer servers.
IPTV, along with Microsoft’s Xbox video game console and its Zune portable media player, is part of the company’s push to move beyond the office and into the living room. -- Reuters
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