Xbox 360 gets IPTV

MICROSOFT JUST HASN'T stopped with cracking the holes in PlayStation 3 armour. First it knocked the 1080p discussion, and now, an IPTV service is being prepared in order to make the Xbox the TiVo device for the late first decade of the 21st century.

Unlike the thing Steve Jobs will allegedly be unveiling at his MacWorld keynote - opening exactly the same day as CES this year - IPTV content isn't provided by Microsoft. However, it is working with existing content providers that run their services.

Robbie Bach used the CES Keynote to launch the service with an intelligent name: IPTV for the Xbox 360. Since companies are only talking about social networking blah blah, it's no wonder that this service will feature a sort of joint commenting on content, all with the aim of having as deep a social impact as possible. Just imagine heated arguments over a "scientific error" in one of the sci-fi series [Sheesh, let's hope not. Ed.]. All that, courtesy of IPTV on Xbox 360.

We have seen the demo and we have to say that Microsoft has added a lot of headroom with the console, because software just keeps on being developed. The amount of official modding has just been incredible.

You're still thinking that a larger hard drive isn't on the way? Think of 120GB local storage and hundreds of gigabytes at your local media server. Or a terabyte or two? µ

* THE service is planned to start working by Yule 007. The exact details are unavailable.