MS finally announced the various partnerships to turn the 360 into a TV platform.
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2011/oct11/10-05XBTVPR.mspx
Awesome news for me.
The US partners are…
Bravo, Comcast, HBO GO, Verizon FiOS and Syfy.
I can’t wait to see the (hopefully simplistic) pricing structure.
Can anyone tell me what this means, exactly?
This sounds exciting:
Nearly 40 world-leading TV and entertainment providers, including Bravo, Comcast, HBO GO, Verizon FiOS and Syfy in the U.S.; BBC in the U.K., Telefónica in Spain; Rogers On Demand in Canada; Televisa in Mexico; ZDF in Germany; and MediaSet in Italy, will begin rolling out entertainment services to the console this holiday, in more than 20 countries.
But then it segues to this nonsense and I can’t continue reading:
“Combining the world’s leading TV and entertainment providers with the power of Kinect for Xbox 360* and the intelligence of Bing voice search will make TV and entertainment more personal, social and effortless.”
Huh?
I’m very excited about getting content direct to my TV without cable, etc. I just want to know: what do I get and how do I pay for it? Being able to watch HBO on my XBox would be awesome. Having to pay for cable that I don’t need just do that would be useless.
Yeah, potentially interesting, but the devil is in the details. If I have to pay more, or if it only works if I have a cable subscription, then it’s all pretty pointless.
Agreed. I’d love to be excited about it, but if Time Warner doesn’t allow it in my area, like they didn’t allow ESPN3 on Xbox Live for so long, then there’s nothing to get excited about yet. Or if it ends up costing me more than $50 a month to get the same services I get from cable (channels, HD, DVR) then it’s also pointless.
If HBO Go works the same way on 360 that it does on iPad then count me in. Streaming HBO’s (almost) full library of tv shows and plenty of movies for no extra cost and finally on my tv instead of a 10 inch screen is awesome.
Exactly. I don’t care about anything else in that announcement. If I can get unlimited HBO through the 360 on my TV, then I’m all in. HBO Go is almost useless to me now as I rearley ever watch TV on my iPad.
If HBO Go is totally separate and I can pay for it by itself, I’m interested. If it still requires me to sign up for a full package with Comcast (my local cable provider) that includes HBO, paying for dozens (hundreds) of channels I’ll never ever watch, they can continue to go fuck themselves.
Yeah, I’ll repeat the obvious: I can’t tell from the PR whether you’d still need a satellite/cable account to get HBO on the Xbox, like you do with the iPad HBO Go app.
Of course it really wouldn’t make sense to still require a subscription to satellite or cable, since you’re presumably already using an Xbox with the same TV you have your cable box hooked up to. But then, what the networks do rarely makes sense.
Everything I’m reading points to the need for an existing cable TV subscription to use these channels, which is incredibly stupid. Why is this better than hitting the HDMI 2 button on your remote and just watching TV normally, since you’re already a cable subscriber? I guess some people would like to have Xbox alerts pop up over their shows? It seems superfluous.
This drives me crazy. I don’t want all of the BS channels that come with a TWC package. I want Internet and HBO. I’d prefer to pay for HBO separately. I guess they’re too wedded to the cable companies.
That would make me sad, as I’m in agreement with you. I wish they would just announce some more concrete details.
It’s kinda sad that these companies so continuously fuck up, screw the customer, or outright misrepresent themselves/lie, that a simple press release can be met with so much apprehension and derision. They’ve earned this mistrust.
I got a press release from Crackle today mentioning that their stuff (TV shows like Seinfeld and News Radio, plus a bunch of Sony Pictures movies) would be free to Gold subscribers.
Pretty sure the availability is going to vary by partner policies, but alas I don’t have details yet.
HBO GO on my Xbox would turn my iPad2 into nothing but a bathroom Reddit reader.
I know HBO Go will be tied to the cable subscription. HBO has been adamant that it’s a supplemental feature to their cable service rather than a replacement.
Well YouTube is pretty sweet, and that won’t require a cable subscription. I’m glad I have the chat pad.
I’d be on board with this even if I could get Fios TV streamed via the 360 and get around the local Comcast monopoly. Comcast made it against the law to have Fios TV in my town, but I can have Fios internet.
I’d love to be able to get HBO here in Denmark through the Xbox. Its rather expensive to get the shows any other way, and this would be awesome.
I guess I can dream it will come here in 10-15 years.