Microsoft rolling out carpet for Xbox 360 streaming TV service
Microsoft announced that the company would be rolling out streaming TV service this holiday on the Xbox 360. It appears that Verizon will be the first of the lot to start streaming a limited number of channels.
Verizon sent out a press release today revealing that the company will be offering up 26 whopping streaming channels out of its 1800 or so available on FIOS. Users must have a subscription to Xbox Live Gold, Verizon FiOS TV, and FiOS Internet service to be able to watch these 26 streaming channels.
The Verizon app will support Kinect voice and gesture commands allowing you to wave your hands in the air to change the channel. Verizon and Microsoft is offering a deal to sweeten the pot even more if you decide to subscribe to: Verizon FiOS TV, FiOS phone, and FiOS Internet for $90. With that deal you get a free 12 month Xbox Live Gold subscription and a copy of Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary edition.
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12 Responses to “Microsoft rolling out carpet for Xbox 360 streaming TV service”
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November 30th, 2011
Sweet move Microsoft! I think that puts the nail in the coffin for PS3.
November 30th, 2011
This is good. As long as XBLG stays the same price. If you already have Fios, you can eliminate a set top box, which is $10/month and $15/month for HD DVR (don’t quote me on those prices as I haven’t checked the details of my bill in some time).
26 channels is at least a start.
While this is good it barely saves you money while offering less.
I’d like to see a company bypass the cable/Fios companies and get permission to use content from the network provider instead. Then you’d just be using the cable providers bandwidth, which you pay for anyway and can drop the tv service altogether. Until MS or anyone for that matter does that, this will simply be a glorified cable box. Not to mention additional wear and tear
On your console.
November 30th, 2011
Sounds good
November 30th, 2011
Makes the Gold package worth a little more worth paying for.
All these things add up.
November 30th, 2011
@godless
Until it has full coverage of Fios’s channels it’s actually rather useless.
In an ideal situation, it would allow you to get rid of the rental fee for one of the set top boxes. The would completely alleviate the cost of XBLG.
I can’t imagine anyone doing that in its given state. Unless all the programs you actually watch are covered by those 26 channels and I think that’s rather unlikely.
November 30th, 2011
God won’t be worth a little more because just like Netflix – you still need to pay your cable provider a monthly fee.
Sony offers IPTV serviver all over Europe at no extra cost. I hear BBC is coming Xbox XBLG, PS3 has offered it for years for free!
November 30th, 2011
Roca,
For those with a Gold account, these extras, cost no more, for those without Gold, being able to do this stuff on xbox, and not needing things like a receiver makes it a more appealing package, if you were looking to sign up to this stuff anyway.
Basically the more shit they offer on Gold, the less of a rip off it is.
November 30th, 2011
“Basically the more shit they offer on Gold, the less of a rip off it is.”
Unless you don’t play games online and you require gold you use your already paid for Netflix sub.
XBLG has you pay for things that MS does not have to pay for.
I applaud their genius in fooling the fools.
November 30th, 2011
free online play or GTFO.
December 1st, 2011
“I applaud their genius in fooling the fools.”
One of the reasons I don’t support Cable TV, let alone XBLG any longer.
Did you know CATV once stood for Community Antenna Television, and that Cable TV was at one point not supposed to have commercials? Yeah, look where that wound up.
I found this answer to part of the reason why we still have commercials with Cable TV, which seems to parallel M$’ mentality with XBLG:
“Cable tv is a commercial business. If there is opportunity to make money at it, of course they will. We pay for the priviledge of receiving the television signal, and the advertisers pay for the airtime to advertise their product, and consequently the cable company makes a profit. It’s the way everything else works in the business world.”
There was also another one about how fees don’t cover operating costs, taxes, fees by networks for the right to include them in their channel lineup, programming cost, maintenance, etc.
M$ has clearly made a very profitable business of XBLG and times were that I enjoyed it because of things like Netflix, demos, etc. and was willing to pay for it. The deal was that Netflix streaming wasn’t available on any other consoles back then, free or not.
You didn’t have to pay extra for streaming if you already had the DVD sub, which I did. It also was a much better application than what was available on PC at the time, and I didn’t have to go through the hassle of connecting my laptop to my TV every time I wanted to watch movies.
To boot, there seemed to be a much better selection before distributors made them pull most of it down. For me, I was only paying around $3/mo for XBLG due to deals I found on Amazon, and it beat the crap out of paying $50/mo for cable. I didn’t even count the Netflix sub cost because I had already been happy with the DVD sub for years at the same price.
Now PS3 and even Wii and 3DS offer Netflix, though I’ll probably check out PS3 first, I’m still going through everything Amazon Prime is offering now. I do most all of my online shopping through them, so I make my money back off of shipping, but now they’ve sweetened the sub with a free book check out for my Kindle, some movies and TV shows. I also have yet to give Hulu a thorough inspection. All of these seem like better deals to me than cable or XBLG.
I’ve only just recently returned after about a two year stint, so I still haven’t found what is now the best deal for me. Any advice would be appreciated. It looks like I’ll go through Time Warner here for cable internet first, as they are the only relatively high speed option that doesn’t have a cap built in ($35/12mo/7MB or $45/12mo/15MB). Then I’ll see what Netflix streaming is looking like on PS3, check out Hulu, etc.
December 1st, 2011
“Did you know CATV once stood for Community Antenna Television, and that Cable TV was at one point not supposed to have commercials? Yeah, look where that wound up. ”
I didn’t know the acronym but I did know that it was originally intended to not have commercials.
“but now they’ve sweetened the sub with a free book check out for my Kindle,”
What’s this about CB?
December 1st, 2011
“A Kindle book to borrow for free each month from the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library”
http://www.amazon.com/gp/prime?ie=UTF8&tag=googhydr-20&hvadid=2480937525&ref=pd_sl_4jhisc5c2_e