CES: The Future of TV via Microsoft
On the first day of the annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer sketched out a short-term vision of the future of TV viewing that will (unsurprisingly) have Microsoft at the center of it.
Via Microsoft.com:
Subscription TV services, powered by Microsoft Mediaroom 2.0, will take viewers where they haven’t been before by extending TV experiences across multiple screens, including the PC, TV and mobile phone. The Mediaroom software supports whole-home digital video recording, on-demand capabilities, access to both operator-hosted content and Internet TV, and interactive applications. Mediaroom 2.0 combines client software with cloud-based services to provide viewers with access to a world of great content on the big flat screen in their living room, the PC in their office, and even the smartphone in their pocket.
“Our strategy with Mediaroom is to combine the power of client software and cloud-based services to greatly enhance the way consumers experience digital entertainment,” says Enrique Rodriguez, corporate vice president for the TV, Video and Music Business at Microsoft. “We want to make it easier for consumers to find and discover great content, to watch, listen and engage in new ways, and to do so anywhere and on any screen. Mediaroom 2.0 is a key milestone in our strategy, providing the software platform to power operators’ service clouds to reach more screens, and more people, with more content than ever before.”
While the original version of Mediaroom enabled services to be viewed on TV set-top boxes and on Xbox 360 game consoles, Mediaroom 2.0 alleviates the need for operators to deploy redundant systems, allowing them to expand the reach of their television service to include Windows 7-based PCs via Windows Media Center, Web browsers on both Macs and Windows-based PCs and, in the future, compatible smartphones. Mediaroom 2.0 also gives TV service operators the ability to reach beyond their managed IPTV networks, extending their television services to their unmanaged broadband networks. As a result, operators have the ability to offer content from a vast number of television and Internet sources, and deliver it to more viewers in more places than ever before.
All of this gives people more freedom in where and how they access their entertainment, while also providing a familiar, consistent experience. For example, subscribers could start watching a show on one screen and finish watching it on another. They could also build a video queue on a smartphone and watch the content later on a TV or PC. While traveling they could watch a recorded TV program on a smartphone and later watch an on-demand feature film in HD on a laptop all via Mediaroom 2.0 enabled TV services.
The future of content is certainly about making it easier for consumers to find and discover great content; to watch, listen and engage with TV in new ways; and to do so anywhere and on all the screens of their lives. The actual device will become less important – we will simply expect a seamless content viewing experience with centralized content, DVR anywhere, on-demand features and interactive applications that can flow from screen to screen on any device. iPTV screen in the living room, smartphone on the subway, laptop in the garden….
I did like the article really much, was really informative and the best part was that only the required part was elaborated, to the point concise information always helps and keeps readers running around digging for the information’s will never require a reread. I really wish spammers read these articles and check how easy it is to be human and respect knowledge.