Microsoft Announce New TV Partnerships

Despite Microsoft’s deal with Sky to show content from a special channel on the NXE dashboard, the PS3 has probably led the way for streaming TV on home consoles for over a year now. That might be about to take a bit of a shift back in the Xbox 360’s favour with a raft of new partnerships to bring streaming content to Microsoft’s machine.

The press release we’ve been sent mentions 4 on Demand, LoveFilm, MuzuTV, BlinkBox and of course, MSN video player all as having some presence, presumably through dashboard applications like the Sky Go player.

There are also multiple mentions of BBC content but we assume that this is simply being delivered via MSN Video Player and BlinkBox as part of their existing services rather than the addition of the iPlayer.

The BBC has previously cited their inability to offer the iPlayer on a platform which requires payment and it has been suggested that Microsoft’s desire to keep this sort of service as a premium for paid up Live Gold members would mean that the BBC is prohibited from allowing their industry leading iPlayer to appear.

Still, any extra functionality is to be welcomed, even if it’s not as comprehensive (or as cheap, Sky Go!) as we’d like. The new content is set to roll out before Christmas so we’d expect some presence around the time the dashboard gets its next refresh. We think that’s happening around the middle of November so we should get more info then.

Source: Press Release