Microsoft on your telly: a history of the company's Internet TV strategy
This is the first article by Mack D. Male, in a two part series, exploring Microsoft's Internet TV strategy. Mack is the author of Windows Media Blog and mastermaq. — Television over the Internet, better known as IPTV …
Context & Ripple Effects
Mack D. Male's two-part history lands three weeks after Microsoft rebranded its IPTV platform as Mediaroom at NXTcomm, and reads as a map of how the company got there — from early web TV experiments to the carrier-grade middleware it now sells to telephone companies. The piece matters because Microsoft is attacking the living room from two directions at once: Mediaroom for telco set-top boxes, and the Xbox, which just added Disney content to its Video Marketplace and picked up a family-broadening push at E3 this summer.
First-order effects
- Telcos weighing Mediaroom get a single narrative that frames it as the culmination of a decade-long strategy rather than a point product, which strengthens Microsoft's hand in carrier negotiations.
- The Xbox's dual role as game console and TV endpoint becomes explicit, putting Disney-backed Video Marketplace inventory in front of an audience Mediaroom alone never reaches.
Second-order effects
- Cable and satellite operators facing Mediaroom-powered telco entrants must answer a competitor whose cost structure is software-licensed rather than hardware-built.
- Content owners like Disney gain leverage by licensing across both delivery rails — set-top IPTV and console marketplace — instead of negotiating per-platform exclusivity.
Third-order effects
- If both tracks hold, the set-top box stops being an operator's appliance and becomes a software platform contest among Microsoft, cable vendors, and console makers — a shift regulators and broadcasters would eventually have to reckon with.
The trend: Television delivery is shifting from closed operator hardware to licensed software platforms, and Microsoft is running parallel plays through carriers and the console to own that layer.