In Part 2 of this two-part Q&A, Ben Huang, product management director with Microsoft Mediaroom, talks with xchange Editor in Chief Paula Bernier about Microsoft’s move to position Xbox as a set-top box, wireless tie-in to Mediaroom and more.
xchange: For years people have talked about how Xbox was Microsoft’s Trojan horse to gain control of the TV and home networking. What is the relationship between Mediaroom and Xbox? And how do your Mediaroom customers figure into what you’re doing with Xbox?
Huang: Last CES, we had announced the integration of the Mediaroom functionality into the Xbox 360. All Xbox 360s in the field today can be enabled with Mediaroom. We do that in partnership with the operators. There’s going to be scenarios where Xbox is really attractive to certain consumer segments to be used in that particular way. But the reason that we did the integration with Mediaroom is we just saw that there were a lot of partnership opportunities for them to enable Xbox as one of the devices in the home that also runs Mediaroom.
xchange: Mediaroom sits on the Xbox hardware and you no longer need a set-top box?
Huang: Yes.
xchange: But if Xbox is tied to a specific service provider, does that mean, in that scenario, it’s no longer a retail product?
Huang: No. It could range from anything from you getting an Xbox from the operator and that Xbox already comes Mediaroom-enabled or you could have an Xbox 360 you’ve already purchased, call the operator, and bring that Xbox into the Mediaroom fold, if you will.
xchange: Which service providers are supporting the Mediaroom-based Xbox today?
Huang: Xbox 360 with Microsoft Mediaroom is available to service providers now. We have seen a high level of interest from our service provider customers and are working with a number of them regarding commercial deployments.
We look forward to the service being available to consumers in the near future; however, timing around commercial availability is ultimately up to our service provider customers to determine.
[While] there haven’t been any public announcements about the commercial deployments yet, during the course of this year, and even last year, we’ve been working closely with a handful of them to do the trialing and the planning phase. So as this year rolls on you’ll hear us having some pretty specific announcements about specific countries where that service is going to be available.
xchange: Looking at AT&T and Verizon earnings last week, wireless is where it’s at. How does Mediaroom tie into wireless?
Huang: Even in the wireless world, you have your IP-based devices, whether it’s your portable media player, with Zune or the iPods or your cell phone. So how do you tie those devices to the TV experience that individual has subscribed to. I agree with you that there’s a lot of stuff that’s happening on the wireless side, but I don’t think any of us think that the core TV experience is going away any time soon. And so for us it’s really around how do you think about Mediaroom taking the TV experience and decoupling it from the TV device.
xchange: Microsoft last fall announced plans to add advertising support to Mediaroom. At that time, xchange wrote this new capability would be available in mid-2009. Is that still the plan?
Huang: We don’t have any changes to that timeframe. We’re still working with a limited set of operators to test that release that we did. We know it’s a big, hot area people want to enable, especially given all the capability IP advertising allows you to do.
