Europe's much awaited service will make its debut in France later this month. T-Online France, an ISP subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom operating in France trading as Club Internet, will deliver the first live
Microsoft IPTV service in the continent. Aside from offering full multicasting, VoIP, video conferencing, and broadband lines on Lucent Hardware, the MS IPTV comes as a hybrid including Digital Terrestrial TV, and a VoD library of 1,000 films.
So many Europeans will get to enjoy a
high definition ready set top, a picture in picture capability so two channels can be viewed at once, and the new server based fast channel change that Microsoft has pushed so hard that will make this service a cut above the rest. There is also an Electronic Program Guide capable of showing program guide two weeks ahead just like in most pay TV systems in Europe. The entire VoD library can be searched by program or even actor name while viewers continue to watch a current program. It includes some 150 TV series as well as movies, and the VoD service will be a combination of subscription VoD and pay as you go. In the next months we are about to find out whether the service is very much worth the wait or Microsoft has bitten off more than it can chew.
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