INNOVATION PARTNERSHIP
In the near future, your television system could be much more powerful than your current TV set. If Broadcom and Microsoft have their way, your next TV setup will let you and your family:
- Download and play TV programming from the Internet.
- Make digital video recordings on any TV in the house.
- Watch different recorded programs in different rooms.
- Share photos and music between PC and TV.
Features such as those are what Microsoft and Broadcom have in mind in their new partnership to develop Internet-linked TV devices.
“With DVR Anywhere, viewers could begin watching a movie in the living room, resume viewing it on the kitchen TV during dinner, and finish watching the same movie from the comfort of their bedroom. In addition, members of a household will never have to fight over the remote control again, due to the capability to watch the same or different recorded programs from multiple TVs in the home simultaneously while recording other shows to be viewed at their convenience,” Microsoft said in a press release.
That’s a description of one feature that Microsoft plans for a next generation of its Mediaroom IPTV software.
The Broadcom-Microsoft partnership has been predicted since last month, but was only announced Sunday at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.
It’s part of Microsoft’s push into digital entertainment on the strength of its Mediaroom software. The one-millionth sale of the existing version of Mediaroom will come early in 2008, Microsoft said.
In addition, telecom company AT&T plans to offer its Mediaroom-based Internet service called U-verse to 30 million homes by 2010, reported Computer Business Review magazine at CBRonline.com. As of last fall, that U-verse service had 126,000 subscribers and was available through fiber-optic lines passing about 5.5 million homes, AT&T said.
Not everyone is enthusiastic about the Microsoft-Broadcom partnership. The investor relations manager of Sigma Designs, which is currently the dominant supplier of chips for IPTV devices, told blogger Eric J. Savitz at Tech Trader Daily that Broadcom’s chips might not win Microsoft certification until 2009.
The partnership with Microsoft is in addition to Broadcom’s demonstration of a TV set controlled by its own chips.
Here’s what people are saying about the Broadcom-Microsoft news:
Broadcom is making an intriguing play: Yesterday afternoon, the provider of technologies embedded in devices announced it’s producing the components for HDTV manufacturers to embed video-on-demand-ready features directly into their sets, bypassing set-top boxes. … Then Broadcom played the opposite angle, saying it’s partnering with Microsoft to produce IPTV components for STBs that use Microsoft’s Mediaroom software — the stuff that goes inside STBs.
The biggest challenges for Microsoft and Broadcom in terms of marketing their offerings may be commercial, not technological. Most U.S. cable network operators have to date been hesitant to offer anything beyond the most rudimentary interactive services due to concerns that the bandwidth required for those services detracts from the bandwidth available to deliver programming.
The companies may have more success in Europe where interactive TV is better established. Indeed, Microsoft on Sunday said British Telecom will tap the Microsoft, Broadcom alliance for technology for BT’s Vision digital television service.
Some stock analysts dismissed Broadcom’s threat to Sigma Designs. The investment blog Notable Calls suggested that investors should buy Sigma Designs shares, agreeing with Deutsche Bank analysts that competition from Broadcom and DVD chip-maker ST Micro aren’t a major problem:
Deutsche Bank is out with a positive call on Sigma Designs saying their meeting with the management at CES indicated that the potential competition from Broadcom and ST Micro has not yet materialized. SIGM stock has recently declined in value over unsubstantiated speculation of competitive solutions taking market share in the IPTV and Blu-ray DVD segments.
Firm’s checks indicate that Sigma’s competitors, despite announcing new products at the CES show, are still not certified by Microsoft for its IPTV platform. They view this as validation for Sigma’s superior software/hardware IPTV solution and should help lay to rest concerns of market share loss in 2008.
For more coverage of news coming out of CES, see the “Gadgetress” blog.
