MSN TV Offer Streaming Movies

[Filip Norrgard]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.betanews.com/article/MSN_to_Stream_Movies_to_Television/1105031911' target='_blank'>http://www.betanews.com/article/MSN_to_Stream_Movies_to_Television/1105031911</a><br /><br /></div><i>"MSN announced Thursday that it will begin to offer pay-per-view movies from CinemaNow through its MSN TV 2 set-top boxes beginning in spring 2005. Customers will receive an upgrade to their boxes, which will allow them to view content protected with digital rights management. "We know people prefer to watch movies and videos in the comfort of their living rooms rather than being tied to their computer screens," said Sam Klepper, general manager of MSN TV."</i><br /><br />How many of you would like to have streaming movies playing on your TV? I would be one, if my current ADSL bandwidth is big enough and the picture quality good enough.

[Doug Johnson]

...and if the movie selection was good. I have seen some of these online movie download sites before, and their movie selections were typically quite poor.

[treo007]

Yea, selection is one aspect. Price, integration, DRM implementation, hardware required, etc. are others.

The kind of bandwidth coming into homes, along with the advanced compression technologies being used, certainly makes it possible. So much so that pretty much everybody's (MS, SBC, Verizon, Comcast, Tivo, Netflix, Apple, etc.) going to be trying to do it.

Like everything else, I don't really trust MS though. I understand any company trying to dominate a market, they're just going to try to do it with awful software. Not looking for the blue screen of death on my TV.

Those that are using a Linux flavored implementation are where my dollars are going to go (Tivo, for instance).

Disclaimer: I'm not a Linux freak. In fact, I don't know the first thing about \. whatever. I do know however that it will be reliable.