Microsoft Corp has been on the road wooing cable industry officials with its latest set-top technologies for building living room franchises, but officials at Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, say that Microsoft has a ‘tough row to hoe’ if it plans to make the TV set into another Windows device.
Controlling the viewer
In an interview with ComputerWire Inc’s Multimedia Futures, James Murdoch, vice president for New Media at News Corp, declined to describe Microsoft as a rival but did outline a future where interactive media and entertainment was delivered by set top boxes not dependent upon Microsoft’s windows operating system. When it comes to the brave new world of interactive television and making TV a more compelling environment we are quite capable of figuring out the technology for ourselves said Murdoch. Microsoft reckons we’ll hold the broadcasters by the hand but there are more technologists in the world than the ones at Redmond. They don’t have all the rocket scientists. According to Murdoch, broadcasters don’t want a layer of software or an operating system like Microsoft’s Windows CE between them and the viewers. Broadcasters have historically controlled the viewer, he said. With Microsoft technology in there, he implied, they will lose that control. Look at the internet and what has happened with Explorer and Microsoft products like Active desktop – you don’t control the experience as a publisher. Channel guides have meant big aggregators charging money for real estate. It becomes a hostile environment and that’s for only 10 channels. Imagine if there were hundreds, he said. With Fox (Broadcasting Corp) I don’t want to have programs listed by genre or some other category, the brand identity of the network will be lost. Microsoft has not explained this side of things satisfactorily.
Web content must get better
All this surely is not news for Gates, who was last month seen peddling his wears to top cable executives at the Time Warner offices in New York. Gates was pitching a new type of set top box running Windows CE in a fresh attempt to ensure the company’s software becomes standard for delivery of interactive digital TV. The threat that computers could very easily be made to perform as TV sets has been around for years. But it is only recently that Microsoft has ramped up its efforts in this area and only very recently that the TV guys have begun to show that they might be taking the threat seriously. Microsoft is touting its Windows Broadcast Architecture as the next big thing in the digital convergence. WBA, claims Microsoft, will provide better pictures. As well as the ability to carry more information than just the picture, it can carry enhanced web and video programming. This, it claims, includes applications like making your TV schedule easy to interact with, getting more information from ads, or seeing more information about the TV show. It also includes joining a chat about the show, either as you’re watching it or right after it. The Broadcast PC will also push up-to-date information like web pages down to the desktop. From Gates’ point of view, the convergence of PC and TV is a completely new and unproven market place. It has the potential to drastically increase PC home penetration rates, currently estimated at 35-40% of US households, compared to 98% for TVs. If that potential can be realized, the revenue opportunities are tremendous. But Murdoch reckons interactive TV shows of the type Microsoft describe aren’t happening. Web content has got to get better, he said. Even when using increased bandwidth and streaming video, it is not that compelling. The barrier is pretty low. Actionable response to stories is going to become more prevalent that’s for sure, but story telling is still a business. People don’t want to choose their own adventure.
Control of pictures
For Murdoch the whole PC/TV debate is not a foregone conclusion. There are other non-Windows options out there already, he points out. There’s the Oracle NC work and c
urrent set top boxes offer a lot of functionality. What’s being developed at Sky aren’t Windows environments. PCs and TVs are both computers, he stressed. This is a level playing field. There are opportunities for many other players to emerge. Microsoft are not about to achieve the dominance they have achieved with the desktop. James’ father and News Corp chief executive, Rupert Murdoch, is less subtle in his response to the rising threat of Microsoft. We don’t want Bill Gates to get control of our pictures. That’s the real thing, he told the Financial Times recently. Murdoch senior is believed to have set up an internal study group at News Corp to keep an eye on movements in the computer world.
