01.23.2007 — [UPDATE: 1/25: We got a lot of grief about the title to this story. I admit, it's a bad title and in fact does not fit the story. I'm the bad guy that changed the title from the author's original which was: Some Clarifications on Xbox and IPTV. I apologize to Derek and to the Microsoft folks for setting a negative tone with the poor title. Microsoft didn't mislead. CES attendees and other lay people simply misunderstood. Please see additional dialog in the COMMENTS section below. - Julie Jacobson]

I was confused at the end of Microsoft's keynote on the opening night of CES. Evidently, so were a lot of people, judging by the erroneous press reports and misplaced buzz that followed the event.

During the keynote, Bill Gates and his cohorts announced the new Microsoft TV IPTV Edition and demonstrated some of its more compelling features. At the end of that segment, the Microsoft presenters let us know that their IPTV demonstration was performed on an Xbox 360.

The audience cheered.

They cheered because they assumed you could use an Xbox 360 to deliver any old IPTV content to the television.

You can't.

Microsoft TV IPTV Edition is targeted at the service providers and really is not a consumer-level product. Thus, Microsoft TV IPTV Edition on the Xbox 360 only works if you happen to live in one of the few areas that has a service provider using the Microsoft IPTV platform.

You cannot just take any Xbox 360 connected to the Internet and get this. The Microsoft Xbox/IPTV press release alludes to this fact, but it still is not detailed very well:

IPTV on Xbox 360 is expected to be available to consumers by holiday season 2007 and will be offered by providers that are deploying TV services over broadband networks based on the IPTV Edition software platform.

Furthermore, just because you subscribe to a service that uses Microsoft IPTV on the backend doesn't mean you automatically get the Xbox 360 feature. "Xbox works if the provider allows it," said Microsoft's Brandon Wirtz on the CES show floor. "They download software into the Xbox."

Also note that this service is not what commonly is referred to as Internet TV. Microsoft TV IPTV Edition is not a service for watching any old TV show over the public Internet. You can only watch content offered by your service provider.

No Media Center Integration

I also was baffled by the fact that the Microsoft TV IPTV Edition offering is not available for Windows Media Center, one of Microsoft's flagship products for interacting with TV.

This is not to say that it will not be offered at some point in the future, but it is not something that is going to be available anytime soon.

I started thinking about why Microsoft IPTV does not fit into the Media Center shell, and it finally struck me. Microsoft recently did an update to the Xbox 360 for playing HD DVDs. As part of that upgrade, they loaded in over four million lines of code that included the appropriate codecs for playing HD DVD content like VC1, H.264, and MPEG-2. Since IPTV uses these same codecs, it's now a natural fit for the 360.

The PC, on the other hand, currently does not have these codecs as a standard feature. Most machines will choke when trying to use them if they are only available through software (the ones for the 360 are optimized to take advantage of the architecture's concurrent pipelines and additional graphics hardware already in the box).

Since Microsoft has sold over 10.4 million Xbox 360s, I guess they finally see it as a "real" product with enough sales for it to become a justifiable part of the Microsoft ecosystem. Windows Media Center must still have a way to go before they recognize it as a "real" and successful product.

On another note, Microsoft's IPTV service does not currently support photo and music management, the likes of which are offered by virtually every other settop box/DVR/IPTV provider.

On Channel Changing and Movie Playing

One of the big issues with current IPTV-based platforms is that channel changing usually has delays, thus making it a poor experience for most users.

Microsoft has implemented a new service called Instant Channel Zapping that came out of the Microsoft Research groups.

Each of the possible shows is cached into RAM on the content delivery servers. Each stream and associated cache has a different IP address. When you switch channels, the set-top simply pulls the stream from the cache at a different IP address (It's a little more complex than that, but it works really well). Channel surfing while watching a show seemed to work flawlessly during the demo.

Similarly, Microsoft takes the lag out of the usual video-on-demand experience. "When you press PLAY, it pretty much just starts," said Microsoft's Wirtz. "With a lot of set-top boxes, you press PLAY, you go get a cup of coffee, and come back and then maybe it plays."

IPTV Edition Different from Microsoft TV

Microsoft TV IPTV Edition is the newest generation of the Microsoft TV platform (think of it as Version 2.0). Companies like Verizon, with its FiOS service, are using the original architecture, which is not the IPTV platform.

Hopefully, they will be able to migrate to this latest offering in the not too distant future.

IPTV Reference Design

One set of products that got lost in Microsoft's huge booth was an update to the company's IPTV reference platform for third-party set-top boxes.

NXP showed its STB225 MS IPTV settop reference design (pdf) using an updated chipset. The package allows other manufacturers to provide dedicated settop boxes for the Microsoft TV IPTV platform. The embedded OS is based on Windows CE 6.0, which means it supports playing content stored on the home network via UPnP and DLNA protocols.

Derek R. Flickinger is vice president of R & D for Interactive Homes, Inc.