Microsoft continues moving towards the fall release of live PayTV via the XBOX Live platform. While June saw the official announcement that such video services would come to the platform this fall, few details were available. This week saw momentum finally picking up as the platform was revealed to be in active discussions with content and service providers - specifically Verizon and Comcast.
While the concept of video delivery to the game console is nothing new - heck, we first began writing about such video services in 2008 - these services have, in the US, been very limited in scope. Both Zune and Netflix services were seen as augmentation plays to the core PayTV service.
In Europe, the story has been quite different. The XBOX has already been acting as a settop box for BT Vision and as an integrated 'app' for Sky. In the case of BT Vision, the service was integrated via Microsoft Mediaroom - a product which has XBOX delivery capabilities but very little enthusiasm these days. Note that Mediaroom powers AT&T's U-verse, which has not taken advantage of XBOX delivery and seemed absent in this week's news coverage. We anticipate Mediaroom is nearing end-of-life.
Microsoft's new service will take advantage of the XBOX Live infrastructure and looks to unify PayTV and OTT services. Which opens the question, will XBOX become the first large-scale OTT replacement service?
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