Last year stories started circulating about a Microsoft plan to integrate pay TV into Xbox Live. Reports claimed they were close to finalizing deals with companies including Time Warner, the BBC, and HBO.
However, it now appears they weren’t as close as originally reported and their plans have been put on hold indefinitely. It seems TV executives weren’t impressed enough to offer terms acceptable to Microsoft, and the deal fizzled.
Citing an unnamed media executive personally involved in the negotiations, Reuters says Microsoft got so far as demonstrating their TV platform in action, but ultimately decided the price of programming was too high. Their source reportedly said, “They built Microsoft TV, they demoed it for us, they asked for rate cards but then said ‘ooh ah, that’s expensive.”
Combining this new information with previous reports about Microsoft TV, it appears their plan was to provide both Netflix-style video on demand, but with more current content, and a traditional (but web-based) pay TV service. In addition, they seemed to be considering producing exclusive content of their own.
Of course this is nothing new or shocking. Like so many other industries built around legacy technology, they have fought nearly every attempt to develop new business models.
Network executives have licensed TV series to Netflix with key episodes missing, demanded Hulu block viewers who chose to watch their free shows (and commercials) on TVs instead of computer monitors. On the other side of the equation, cable providers are punished if they help paying customers extend TV service beyond the living room.
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Result for: time warner
Time Warner Cable has signed a new deal with Disney this week, giving their subscribers free access to the sports site ESPN3.
Because of the deal, 12.7 million Time Warner subscribers and 2.4 million Bright House subscribers will get free access to the site, and the ability to stream full games.
During the recent World Cup, ESPN says almost 8 million people tuned into the site at one point during the tournament.
The cable companies had long held out on ESPN3, citing excessive fees from Disney.
Additionally, the agreement will allow TW and BH to continue carrying the Disney Channel, ABC Family, Disney XD and ESPN 3D.
Result for: time warner
In April we reported that the U.S. Copyright Group had filed lawsuits against 50,000 pirates, each alleged of downloading a number of films including “Steam Experiment,” “Far Cry,” “Uncross the Stars,” “Gray Man” and “Call of the Wild 3D.”
The Group has now demanded that Time Warner Cable, one of the largest ISPs in the U.S., hand over the identity of 2000 alleged pirates, and Time Warner has declined, saying it is too expensive, and “exceeds their current staffing capabilities.”
The ISP says it would cost them about $45 USD each to send out the info on all the requests.
“Time Warner Cable does not have enough employees to respond to these requests. In a typical month, the company receives an average of 567 IP lookup requests, nearly all of them coming from law enforcement. These lookup requests involve everything from suicide threats to child abduction to terrorist activity,” each of which takes “immediate priority” over copyright infringement cases.
The ISP’s Subpoena Compliance team is currently only a five-man team and in addition to the “priority” requests, they can handle 28 non-critical subpoenas per month. The U.S. Copyright Group has so far asked for 809, just this month.
