One million users of Microsoft’s Mediaroom IPTV software

Microsoft has been investing in interactive TV for more than a decade, and anticipates the IPTV effort will start paying off even more in the coming years.

Microsoft’s CTO Peter Barrett believes that IPTV is equipped to handle lots of demand for on-demand content, while cable and satellite TV will struggle as content moves to HD.

He considers that the popularity of file-sharing services shows that consumers want to get their content anywhere and everywhere. "People are voting for the utility of watching TV on their PC by doing it the hard way," he said. "Setting aside that BitTorrent is largely illegal, it's a chore to use."

There is a strong market, he believes, for combining the wide selection and quality available via file-sharing, with the ease of use of traditional TV.

Eventually, content could not only be sent throughout the home, but also available remotely on a PC or mobile device.

"These things are not part of the imminent service release, but are inevitable," Barrett said. "It's the sort of thing that's really, really hard to do if you have a broadcast infrastructure."

Microsoft also expects the merging of its IPTV and Media Center PC efforts to ultimately mean that developers can write interactive applications that can run on either set-top boxes or PCs.

Microsoft envisages the kind of bonus interactive features included on high-definition DVDs to eventually be available on video sent to Media Center PCs or Mediaroom set-top boxes. Already, a number of developers are writing programs that can sit on top of Microsoft's interface.

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