The company said that Time Warner Cable, currently part of sometime rival AOL Time Warner Inc, and Comcast Corp, the nation’s largest cable network, will both separately trial Microsoft’s Interactive Program Guide this fall.
IPG is a part of Microsoft TV Foundation Edition. Comcast is also set to trial Foundation Edition software as part of its deal, while Time Warner has evidently committed to test just the IPG feature.
Comcast will conduct a limited trial of the software in Seattle this fall, while Time Warner will trial IPG in Beaumont, Texas, where it has 100,000 subscribers. Both firms will run the software on Motorola DCT2000 set-top boxes.
Foundation Edition’s name is indicative of the fact that it is a scaled-back version of Microsoft’s initially ambitious intentions for iTV, and also of the fact that it represents Microsoft’s attempt to establish a beachhead in the set-top box market.
The company announced the product a month ago, saying it will allow on-demand video, games and information services. Microsoft said the software will also be useable on future-generation devices as well as today’s simpler set-tops.
Motorola Inc has announced that its DCT1700, DCT2000, DCT2500, DCT5100 and DCT6000 ranges of set-tops will support the Microsoft software.
This is Microsoft’s second major attempt to crack the set-top market. The company has been having problems for the last couple of years getting partners to buy into its embedded software strategy, in the mobile phone and set-top arenas.
Previously, the company attempted to bring a more featured set-top to market, with a number of cable providers and software than would run on DCT5000 devices, but the company suffered from technical and user adoption setbacks.
Microsoft’s problems lead to a number of delayed rollouts, and to some cable companies considering dropping Microsoft in favor of software from competitors. In May 2002, the company said it was going back to basics.
The earlier strategy also involved taking big equity stakes in cable firms in the US and Europe, hoping that owning a piece of the customer would help sell software. But that strategy fizzled, and the company lost money, as these cable firms started to collapse.
Microsoft wrote off almost $1.2bn in investments in telecommunications firms at the end of its fiscal 2002, and according to reports quoting CEO Steve Ballmer yesterday, the company has no current plans to use the same strategy again.
Source: Computerwire
