Microsoft's next Xbox will take over your TV, interact with your cable


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Dont you think you would still need their stupid box though? I cannot see Verizon saying you cannot have any of their boxes at all no?

And I am a Verizon FIOS subscriber, so I know the 360 currently acts as an additional STB right now, but surely Verizon would not allow it to be the only one?

If they somehow did allow it and you can use just their lines into your house and were not required to get any STB through them, then this is a possible alternative indeed. Would it also serve as a DVR as well would then be my next question.

I am 9999% sure verizon won't allow me to bypass their box :p :angry: but if they did, then paying for XBLGold won't be as bad. A friend of mine has already returned one of his FiOS cable boxes because his Xbox 360 can substitute for it (won't work for everyone because of limited channels). He already pays for XBLGold for online play and hence ended up saving $$ on his second box.

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I am 9999% sure verizon won't allow me to bypass their box :p :angry: but if they did, then paying for XBLGold won't be as bad. A friend of mine has already returned one of his FiOS cable boxes because his Xbox 360 can substitute for it (won't work for everyone because of limited channels). He already pays for XBLGold for online play and hence ended up saving $$ on his second box.

Sure Verizon gets a little less because you don't pay for their box but if they let you use the Xbox wouldn't that also save them on supporting the hardware they do now? If MS played it right they could make deals to make the Xbox the cable providers default box. That would be a huge win for them.

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Sure Verizon gets a little less because you don't pay for their box but if they let you use the Xbox wouldn't that also save them on supporting the hardware they do now? If MS played it right they could make deals to make the Xbox the cable providers default box. That would be a huge win for them.

Repeat after me: Verizon will not do anything that makes them less money :laugh:

I will be a happy soul if this happens but I seriously doubt it.

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Repeat after me: Verizon will not do anything that makes them less money :laugh:

I will be a happy soul if this happens but I seriously doubt it.

:p

Well if it saves you on paying for a second box then that's something at least.

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I'm afraid I don't see MS making a success of this.

This was what everyone (including MS) wanted from Windows Media Center and it never amounted to anything because the cable companies weren't interested in giving up any control. As a result, Americans got fed up waiting for the promise to become reality and the rest of the world got fed up waiting for MS to devote a similar amount of attention to making WMC support all the features of DVB-T. In the end nobody was satisfied and a potentially great product became the afterthought that it is today.

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I'm afraid I don't see MS making a success of this.

This was what everyone (including MS) wanted from Windows Media Center and it never amounted to anything because the cable companies weren't interested in giving up any control. As a result, Americans got fed up waiting for the promise to become reality and the rest of the world got fed up waiting for MS to devote a similar amount of attention to making WMC support all the features of DVB-T. In the end nobody was satisfied and a potentially great product became the afterthought that it is today.

MS gets free data on your viewing habits. That's a huge win for them. Even without an additional functionality, I'm sure they'd just love to be a dumb pass through that dumps all the data of what you watch on Netflix, Hulu, and cable to them. That's a crazy advertising gold mine, that, to my knowledge, no one has in full yet.

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Microsoft should roll Hulu Plus and Netflix subscription costs into xbox live, coupled with Xbox Live. Dubbed Premium members, which is one I just made up, is more expensive and allows both gaming and TV.

One bill all services and a selling feature for MS for their console. People pay $50 a year on Xbox live, and $96 each on the other two services. Round it off at $200 and its a bargain for everyone, or even less if you can only use the TV services on the console.

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I'm afraid I don't see MS making a success of this.

This was what everyone (including MS) wanted from Windows Media Center and it never amounted to anything because the cable companies weren't interested in giving up any control. As a result, Americans got fed up waiting for the promise to become reality and the rest of the world got fed up waiting for MS to devote a similar amount of attention to making WMC support all the features of DVB-T. In the end nobody was satisfied and a potentially great product became the afterthought that it is today.

I don't see them as anything close to the same thing though. WMC had a number of things going against it from the start. First off was the hardware, not many people wanted a big box that can make a good deal of noise in the living room, the pc oems once again screwed this up from the start. Second as you say the cable providers didn't want to let it replace their own boxes. WMC is also just about video and music but not games like the xbox. It also never got the brand penetration the Xbox has right now.

This doesn't sound like it leaves the cable providers out of the picture but adds to it since you still need a box from them as well. Also we know the hardware itself will be nice and not a PC with a nice UI on top. It can also still play all the games and other things which media center was never meant for.

All in all I'd say this works fine for them.

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It will probably have a passthrough HDMI and IR blaster so it can overlay its own UI on top of your settop box.

Microsoft will not market anything that relies on an IR blaster. Such methods are for hobbyists building HTPCs from scratch, and it's a horrible, horrible solution for a product that would be delivered at this scale.

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I'm afraid I don't see MS making a success of this.

This was what everyone (including MS) wanted from Windows Media Center and it never amounted to anything because the cable companies weren't interested in giving up any control. As a result, Americans got fed up waiting for the promise to become reality and the rest of the world got fed up waiting for MS to devote a similar amount of attention to making WMC support all the features of DVB-T. In the end nobody was satisfied and a potentially great product became the afterthought that it is today.

The thing is, with this system MS don't need to work "with" the TV providers. you plug the tuner/PVR into the Xbox. you tell the xbox what provider you have and what tuner, and in most cases it will know what order your channels are in, and it hooks into a web based EPG for your channels and voila. it can record, it can overlay info it can provide glass second screen functionality. heck with an IR blaster it can use the Kinect to do a lot of controls as well.

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No it won't, I'm buying a PS4.

Um, good for u and nice trolling comment by the way. From what I've read through the comments you're the only one to bring up PS4 in here. This is about Xbox not playstation. Lts keep it civil with less troll mongering

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Um, good for u and nice trolling comment by the way. From what I've read through the comments you're the only one to bring up PS4 in here. This is about Xbox not playstation. Lts keep it civil with less troll mongering

I didn't know I was raging and trolling, apparently you can see into my head? I simply stated that I won't be buying the next console by Microsoft.

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No it won't

Really? Could you show us the design documents you're basing this off of?

Or is this just baseless conjecture?

I'm buying a PS4.

And I'm eating chicken for dinner. Another meaningless statement that has nothing to do with this topic.

Any more contributions?

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I also find it interesting that the article talks about MS pushing the reveal back because the hardware is getting changed and they didn't have it ready to show this month. I also think that the delay was due to some newer licensing deals that didn't go through yet that they would've talked about. It'd be a nice surprise if they beefed up the hardware more and pushed it back so it's closer to E3 which doesn't give the competition enough time to counter what they show off.

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If they have changed anything now. it's to late for anyone else to make changes and still make a 2013 or early 2014 release with stable tested hardware.

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If they have changed anything now. it's to late for anyone else to make changes and still make a 2013 or early 2014 release with stable tested hardware.

Any changes could've been done months ago and had a trickle down effect that pushed the reveal back a month. We really don't know, but i'm betting on it being due to some licensing not going through in time.

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Really? Could you show us the design documents you're basing this off of?

Or is this just baseless conjecture?

And I'm eating chicken for dinner. Another meaningless statement that has nothing to do with this topic.

Any more contributions?

Wow... I didn't know I had to walk through a seven word statement so that you could understand it better.

"No it won't" - Which means it won't control my cable, because I refuse to allow it to.

"I'm buying a PS4" - This statement was part of the first statement, and separated by a comma, meaning the first part of the sentence is linked to the second part.

No it won't, because I'm not going to buy the new Xbox because of the negative comments I've seen over the past several weeks, I'm buying a PS4 because I refuse to subject myself to Microsoft's out of touch practices.

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Wow... I didn't know I had to walk through a seven word statement so that you could understand it better.

"No it won't" - Which means it won't control my cable, because I refuse to allow it to.

"I'm buying a PS4" - This statement was part of the first statement, and separated by a comma, meaning the first part of the sentence is linked to the second part.

No it won't, because I'm not going to buy the new Xbox because of the negative comments I've seen over the past several weeks, I'm buying a PS4 because I refuse to subject myself to Microsoft's out of touch practices.

which goes back to my reply to you: this a thread about xbox not ps4. if you're a playstation fan then go to a playstation thread and let your voice be heard there. because seriously your comment doesn't add anything. and going through your comment history it's clear of your hate:

in the post: Adam Orth:'I don't get the drama' over 'always-on' Xbox

LoL Glad I switched from 360 to PS3 and vowed never to touch a Microsoft console again, paying off now I think. :)

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Dont you think you would still need their stupid box though? I cannot see Verizon saying you cannot have any of their boxes at all no?

You might be surprised, There is only one cable/satellite provider in Australia (Foxtel) that covers the entire country with no competition. And they offer a cheaper service if you use the 360 over one of there boxes. Granted its over ethernet because the tech wasn't there years ago and it's only come into fruitation the last 2 years because no one realised how much consoles would take over the media market but if Microsoft somehow included decoder software or the companies licenced it to microsoft to act as a stand alone box its self this would be a massive feature.

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