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XB1 TV features to be supported only for US/Japan at launch

chubigans

y'all should be ashamed
So this seemed a little too big not to get its own thread. Apparently it was slipped that the Xbox TV features will only work in the US and Japan at launch, with support for other countries coming further down the line. Way further.

http://m.ign.com/articles/2013/09/20/tgs-microsoft-on-its-vision-for-xbox-one

“TV, if you want to continue, would be another criticism. We talk a lot about TV and that's only going to work basically in Japan and the U.S. at launch where you have HDMI-in scenarios, so you'll say 'hey, what if I have a terrestrial over the air?' We won't have a solution for that right away, but we still sell it as part of the vision. So it's honest criticism and you'd love to have the new launch be everything that you had before and more, but unfortunately it's an untenable [proposition].”

...

But what about the fact that Xbox One won't have the full TV functionality at launch? Penello sees it as a demographic question. “It's not going to be us – it's not the early adopters that this is a problem [for] - which is why we're not prioritising solving it right off the bat, because the price of the consoles will have to come down like they do in every generation, the market will expand, we'll eventually catch up to the people who are probably laggards in TV, and by that time we'll have a more robust story than we have at launch.” So in summary – the TV stuff's not really for you, but by the time your mum and dad want a machine it'll totally work.
 

ElTorro

I wanted to dominate the living room. Then I took an ESRAM in the knee.
Not surprised, even the damn TVii is still not working here in Europe, and it's almost a year now since the Wii U was released.
 

hoos30

Member
They haven't even explained what the US TV features are really going to be, so it's hard for our European friends to be disappointed. What are they missing exactly?

EDIT: Just to be clear, IMO, their whole TV execution has been a hot mess.
 

IT Slave

Banned
Before we get outraged, what's the state of cable and satellite TV outside of North America and Japan? It may be much ado about nothing.
 
Before we get outraged, what's the state of cable and satellite TV outside of North America and Japan? It may be much ado about nothing.

Why is that our problem? Microsoft's intent was to have an all-in-one box. It's on them to organize this kind of thing and deliver on their promises.
 

ElTorro

I wanted to dominate the living room. Then I took an ESRAM in the knee.
They haven't even explained what the US TV features are really going to be, so it's hard for our European friends to be disappointed. What are they missing exactly?

Probably the guide and guide-related voice controls like "Watch BBC" or "When does Top Gear air?".
 

ButchCat

Member
So all the TV TV TV talk and they narrow it down only to two markets. First it was voice recognition so what's next Microsoft?
 

FuturusX

Member
Hey Mr Microsoft you are not selling a 'story' you are selling a...wait no TV features in Europe at all? What the hell are you selling?
 

CoG

Member
Before we get outraged, what's the state of cable and satellite TV outside of North America and Japan? It may be much ado about nothing.

What's the state in the US is the real question. Most the people I talk to under 30 do not have cable or any desire to ever get it. The Xbox One should be emphasizing services that allow you to ditch cable, not prolonging the agony. What were they thinking releasing a console with an eight year lifespan with a main feature that caters to a waining industry?
 
Before we get outraged, what's the state of cable and satellite TV outside of North America and Japan? It may be much ado about nothing.

Take the UK for example, Sky is in about 10 million homes and then half of them are HD customers. Really strange they wouldn't try do something with that.
 

Bossun

Member
So you antagonize Japan by calling it tier 2 and not delivering units at launch but instead wait the next year.

Then you antagonize tier 3 countries that do not have a good internet connection.

Finally you antagonize Europe by not delivering TV features.

That's a good plan overall.
 
This was already known, well the Japan but wasn't but the US only bit was. If you thought otherwise the MS marketing worked well on you!

They already explained how you can still plug stuff in but you won't get things like the Xbox Guide, so no ability to use voice commands to record Playboy TV or whatever you're in to, but do gain the ability to say 'Xbox tv' without reaching for the TV remote.

And of course you then can have things snapped, get game notifications whilst watching TV etc.
 
Eagleman.jpg


USA, USA, USA!
 

honorless

We don't have "get out of jail free" cards, but if we did, she'd have one.
My uneducated guess is that this means the US and Japan just use compatible broadcasting methods/tech.

It doesn't seem likely that MS would put in extra work to have TV features working on day one for a country that doesn't even have a definite release date.
 

Ushae

Banned
The HDMI in still works as per normal, it's just the One Guide stuff that will take prob a while to launch properly for other countries. The question is how appealing this will be when it doesn arrive and the eventual price drop takes place.
 

hoos30

Member
What's the state in the US is the real question. Most the people I talk to under 30 do not have cable or any desire to ever get it. The Xbox One should be emphasizing services that allow you to ditch cable, not prolonging the agony. What were they thinking releasing a console with an eight year lifespan with a main feature that caters to a waining industry?

That would be asking them to move mountains. Cable/Sat exist. Live sports and news exist. That's 75% of the programming that people actually watch. No rational person could expect one company to untie that knot all at once. Cord cutting is nice in theory, but it is far from a majority of the market.

But whatever "story" tell are actually trying to tell, they aren't doing a very good job of it.

By the way, don't mind me, I'm a bitter Windows Media Center user. :-(
 

IT Slave

Banned
Why is that our problem? Microsoft's intent was to have an all-in-one box. It's on them to organize this kind of thing and deliver on their promises.

Penello from the same interview:

“So the basic experience of HDMI-in will be available for anybody that has TV with HDMI-in. I actually think it's an under-appreciated feature. Today, if I want to go between my console and my set top box I still have to pick up another remote and control it... TV is going to be an interesting challenge for us, as we really have to go through each region, each provider, each set of I.P. and build a solution that works.”

So there are so many scenarios and the pay TV market is a mess in the U.S., much less the rest of the world. Japan is probably the easiest of them all due to a certain degree of standardization and advanced infrastructure.

Some parts of the U.S. won't even be supported. For example, what if you just get OTA DTV? Xbox One won't support that. I have a non-HD cable box upstairs and I don't want to pay an extra $4 a month for an HD box. It doesn't have HDMI so I'm basically ass out if I want to use an Xbox One upstairs (which is ideal since the upstairs loft is my unofficial "man cave").
 

Y2Kev

TLG Fan Caretaker Est. 2009
I actually forgot it could do this. Microsoft is not really playing this up surprisingly.
 

IT Slave

Banned
What's the state in the US is the real question. Most the people I talk to under 30 do not have cable or any desire to ever get it. The Xbox One should be emphasizing services that allow you to ditch cable, not prolonging the agony. What were they thinking releasing a console with an eight year lifespan with a main feature that caters to a waining industry?
I agree and I think both PS4 and Xbox One have this covered and are going in the right direction. Even the PS3 and X360 had awesome media features.

I've been trying to ditch cable for years but I love sports and I love news and those things are a pain to get when you don't pay for cable.

There are even U.S. Senators that are trying to break up the cable scam by making them offer a la carte services. But it's an uphill battle because all the cable companies do is pass on the cost of the content providers like Viacom, Disney, etc. They are the real problem. They use bundling to subsidize niche channels that don't get high viewership.

Microsoft hired ex-CBS exec Nancy Tellem to work on this issue. They realize that they need an insider to negotiate with content providers. Part of this is drawing a large user base to convince them that there's money to be made by selling their products a la carte. But as long as Joe America is willing to spend $200 a month just to watch ESPN and Duck Dynasty, it's a big uphill battle.

Edit: Added more.
 

Iorv3th

Member
So all that reveal stuff was "this is what our console will do.......... eventually"?

I know we kind of suspected it would only work in the US, but them pushing that as a major part of the system really sucks for those in other countries.
 
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