IPTV on 360 — NOW!

One of the most interesting 360-centric announcements made at this year’s CES was that British Telecomm had signed on to support Microsoft’s Mediaroom set-top box software running on the Xbox 360. Mediaroom is a digital video recorder/video-on-demand application developed for Windows CE-based devices and designed specifically for IPTV — basically, TV delivered over the internet. Naturally, since it’s an always connected appliance and uses a modified version of the Windows OS, the Xbox 360 is the perfect platform for this stuff. All that is required to enable the functionality is a quick dashboard update, some free hard-disk space, and a local IPTV service provider that supports 360 as one of its set-top boxes. British Telecomm is one of the first.

Mediaroom offers on-demand video and DVR through your 360.

But don't worry that Mediaroom will take over your 360 and change its nature; it's still a gaming machine first and foremost, and Mediaroom has been built to work around your games, not kick them to the curb. Say, for example, you want to watch a football game but it coincides with your Halo 3 clan practice. Simply go into your electronic program guide, schedule the football game to be recorded (in HD or SD, depending on your home's bandwidth and service provider), and then play Halo 3 while it’s recording. Better yet, if you’re watching a movie and your buddy invites you to play some CoD4, just hit record, put the game disc in the system, and come back to the flick whenever you’re ready. It’s pretty seamless.

Our demo session took place on a real 360 -- the tech's ready.

Mediaroom has been up and running on the 360 for almost two years (in fact, 360 support was made known at last year’s CES) — so what's the holdup? Unfortunately local service providers’ slow adoption of IPTV has been the biggest barrier. Announcements like the partnership with British Telecomm should help grease the wheels with other service providers and Microsoft remains optimistic as they continue talks with major telecomm companies from around the world. With British Telecom’s deployment as little as two months away, their success (or lack of) could be a boon or bane for the technology in other regions, including North America. In either case, the demonstration shown on the CES floor was nothing short of spectacular — we want Mediaroom sooner rather than later.