Parks Associates Blog

Thursday, May 22, 2008

Microsoft Mediaroom Touts Third-party Developer Tools

I got a press release from the Microsoft Mediaroom team this week, and it looks as thought they're making it easier for third-party developers to build services and features on top of their IPTV framework. A beta version of the Microsoft Mediaroom Presentation Framework was released to selected companies this week.

The Presentation Framework Beta was released to nearly 150 companies globally including content providers, application developers and its service provider customers such as AT&T and BT.

Service providers can repurpose and leverage content already available on the Web, which can save all parties involved time and money. Applications could include a personal media portal on the TV, real time social and communication capabilities, or news/sports applications featuring multiple camera views.

Microsoft took a lot of pounding about this time last year from many of its middleware and systems integrators competitors. One of the common themes was the monolithic and closed nature of the Mediaroom IPTV solution. Microsoft's move to open up to the third-party developers is certainly important, as the next wave of TV applications are going to need to be rolled out quickly and cost-effectively. Giving more companies opportunity to develop applications to the core IPTV solution gives service providers lower risk in seeking out the applications that may turn out to be game-changers. It'll be interesting to see where the Google or YouTube of the IPTV space is going to originate now.

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