Clearer picture for IPTV tech?

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The company is trying to shift away from its reputation of creating products with tons of features but less-than-elegant integration. Instead, the software maker is focused on the basics. For example, while the technology allows for viewing, say nine channels at once, Microsoft is not rushing to do that, instead focusing on trying to offer fast channel changing and other things that improve the TV watching experience.

Microsoft is plotting out plenty of possibilities for the future, but trying to keep the bulk of its energies focused on the present. It calls the strategy "Think big, start small, move fast."

And the company is still in the small stage, to be sure. Of the 17 customers Microsoft has announced, only nine have launched commercially, accounting for about 100,000 users in aggregate.

"We are just getting to the point where IPTV is more than just an experiment," said Vince Vittore, a senior analyst with Yankee Group Research. "Microsoft and operators are still getting their hands around the technology. So it's going to take time."

"We are just getting to the point where IPTV is more than just an experiment."

--Vince Vittore, senior analyst, Yankee Group Research

Many of its future efforts are in the research stages. In recent weeks, the TV team has been doing a lot of user testing, both in homes and with people coming in to the Mountain View, Calif., labs to talk about and show how they use their TV.

One of the big challenges the team is tackling is the notion of a program guide. It made a lot of sense when there were only a couple dozen channels and shows were watched only at the time they were broadcast. However, the move from analog to digital has paved the way for far more channels, while digital video recording and video-on-demand are further increasing the number of options.

It's a challenge for the whole industry, but one that Microsoft thinks could benefit it, provided it can come up with a good answer.

"There's a limit to how much choice is good," said Sal Arora, director of product management for Microsoft TV. "What am I going to do with 1,000 channels?"

It's not that people don't want that many options; it's just hard to find what you want, especially using a program guide and remote control. Arora pointed to Amazon.com as an example. The company has 1 million books, but the interface is good enough that it doesn't feel like you have to browse through all those titles to find something you want.

In a recent research study, Microsoft has been peppering users with questions about how they find things to watch. They are asked about Netflix, Blockbuster Total Access and iTunes. While Microsoft is interested in how much use their rivals are getting, the primary goal is to try to get a sense of how well those services are enabling people to find things from a panoply of choices.

The company is looking at a variety of options, from embedding more metadata in program listings to adding social-networking features so that people can be referred to programming by friends or see what's being most watched in general.

"Those things, I think, will become very relevant and important very quickly," Arora said.

For now, though, Microsoft is trying to sell phone companies and their customers on IPTV as a better alternative to satellite and cable. Reinman, who has been helping Microsoft and its partners hone their pitch, has explored the ways people use TV and has some theories on who might be the early customers for IPTV. And it's not necessarily the techno geeks that are the typical early adopters of Microsoft's technology.

A few different personality types are ripest for the picking, Reinman said. One is the person who is into their TV, but not so much into other types of technology. Such users are willing to pay for new TV features and are actually less likely than the average person to have high-speed Internet access. Another is the individualist, the type of person who looks at a lineup of 200 channels and doesn't see anything they want to watch.

The one thing Reinman definitely does not want to see is the company pitching the technology itself. The phrase IPTV should never be on anything that lands in customers' hands. "I would never use those four letters in a consumer message," she said. "This is really about the best TV experience you can have."

CNET News.com's Marguerite Reardon contributed to this report.

[imacpwr]

Swisscom IPTV, a user's opinion..

November 2006 I signed onto Swisscom's newest adventure,
IPTV. I have to admit it's fantastic, when it works..
The problem is bandwidth, IPTV needs lots of it to funtion
properly and Swisscom knows it. Aparently IPTV turned out
requiering 3 times more bandwidth than Microsoft first claimed.
So Swisscom is now in the middle of the biggest upgrade ever in
it's history bringing the whole system from ADSL up to VDSL so
as to be able to supply the bandwidth needed for IPTV. Me, I'm
one of the less lucky ones at the moment since my home is just
out of reach of VDSL and am still stuck with ADSL until they get
my area upgraded. In the meantime preformance and quality of
IPTV at my place is still below standard. For example I'm not able
to watch one channel and record another channel at the same
time due to bandwidth restrictions. Often I have channels that
the sound and picture are offset by as much as a full second.
The system often suffers from dropped packets, in other words
the picture might have scrambled pixels, freeze for a split
second or even worse, come to a full stop which requires me to
change the channel and back to get it running again.
One of my biggest complaints is the set top box (STB), the thing
can be sluggish and nearly unresponsive at times when using
the menus or trying to view the TV-Guide. Selecting a program
for the STB to record is a gamble as well, many times I've missed
the final minutes of a program or worse, the recording froze at
some point and didn't restart leaving me with half an hour or
more of "freeze frame".
Yes, I know this technology is still in it's infancy that's why I
haven't had my regular television cable disconnected as of yet
but I see the light at the end of the tunnel and it's shining
brightly..!!

[forestwander]

IPTV tech

IPTV is definately the way to go. Even though they may run into a few speed bumps, there is no doubt that is were the future of TV is going.

The technology may still be in its infant stage but we are living in exponential times.

Cable and Satellite providers better get ready. Companies such as Verizon and even Google are going to be formitable opponents.

http://www.forestwander.com