http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid=22978
Interesting! It’s been announced that it will be announced. And only for Europe so far, but hopefully to America sometime soon.
This isnt going to work on standard boxes is it? I’m going to need to lease some shitty version of the 360 from at&t or something?
No clue, but the article says it’ll show a “service” for the “Xbox 360”. So I imagine it’ll show up as a button on one of the blades, like the movie rental service. Who knows whether it’ll cost extra, or what. If it comes included in the Gold membership, then hell yeah, go Microsoft. If it’s a little extra per month, well, it depends on how much… like if it’s cheaper than my current T.V. bill.
I’m assuming it’ll be comparable to cable TV costs.
What the hell kind of connect would you need for 720p?
Anyone care to do the math? It’s probably possible on a halfway decent cable modem if it’s compressed well, and it’s not like the 360 lacks for hardware to decompress it.
Basically. You will not buy an iptv xbox 360 at retail AFAIK, you’ll get it from the provider.
Well, screw that then.
Hrm… it could actually be good. I mean, it could have hdmi and 120gb drive for DVR junk, and I’d have 2 360s without buying another. I think I pay $10 a month to lease my HD/DVR/cable box thing now anyways.
Hm, my (very limited) understanding is that if you buy the big HD you can use an existing 360 just fine. The IPTV system itself uses a special router you have to use, but if you get a device from the provider AFAIK it’s a settop box. No clue really though…
Oh, well then fuck that. I dont want to lease my router.
Well, they announced it for North America back at CES, and showed it off there. It’s coming late 2007 here in the states.
It’s probably best not to think of this as “I can make my 360 do TV” so much as “I can get IPTV from my internet provider, and my settop box will be a special Xbox 360.”
You won’t be buying IPTV 360s at retail, and the usual rules for IPTV apply - you buy it from an IPTV provider that will also provide you with internet access, someone like a Verizon or whatever. They’ll do some line testing, install a special DSL modem or whatnot in your house (it’s slightly different than the DSL and cable modems you usually see today - it’s made for higher bandwidth, and to prioritize uninterrupted quality of service for the TV bits). Those in trials say you can still hook up whatever wifi router you want, but you gotta use the modem they come install.
IPTV is going to be pretty limited for the next year or so, at least in the US. It’s a matter of building out infrastructure in areas to the point where they can deliver enough megabits, reliably enough, for a couple of HDTV channels at once. That stuff takes time.
The CoS prioritisation won’t be done at the DSL modem, it’ll need to be done by the devices between your modem and the IPTV servers in the provider’s headend. Rather, the IPTV device in the headend will mark the packets for expedited forwarding and that marking will have to be honoured by the intermediate devices; this is all downstream traffic.
As well as building out infrastructure, networks also need to be multicast-enabled and that stuff takes time as well.