Neem de tijd en lees onderstaand artikel eens. Als je de laatste alinea leest kom je tot de conclusie dat OpenTV de nieuwe Microsoft is!!!!!!!!!. Ton. Monday November 13 12:35 AM EST Microsoft's Ultimate Delay By Dominic Gates (The Industry Standard) SEATTLE - After well-publicized delays in the rollout of Microsoft's Windows CE-based television software for set-top boxes in the United States and Europe, company execs must have hoped that at least one TV project would arrive on schedule this year. But that's not to be. The company's "Ultimate TV" satellite television service - promised for this year's holiday season - is still expected to reach some retail outlets by the end of the year. But the service won't be widely available. The set-top boxes for Ultimate TV, made by Sony, will not be ready until next year, while a limited number of RCA units, made by Thomson, will be available by the end of December. A planned multimillion-dollar advertising campaign for the holiday season has been postponed until January. Meanwhile, a competitive service from Silicon Valley startup TiVo, whose TV ads reach millions of viewers daily, is available in stores nationwide. Ultimate TV is the next generation of WebTV, which Microsoft bought in 1997 and has 1.1 million subscribers. The set-top receivers, designed by Microsoft and built by Thomson (under the RCA brand) and Sony, deliver in a single box both DirecTV satellite programming and WebTV browsing and interactivity. The key selling point, though, is advanced digital-video-recording, or DVR, capability. It records up to 35 hours of TV from two independent satellite feeds, enabling the simultaneous recording of two channels plus pause, replay, slow motion and picture-in-picture capabilities. In other words, you can watch reruns of Seinfeld and the Lakers game at the same time, sans ads, whenever you choose. DVR was first introduced by ReplayTV, then TiVo, both Silicon Valley companies that sell standalone boxes that work alongside a regular set-top. A current WebTV offering with satellite TV company EchoStar offers limited DVR on a single tuner. Ultimate TV's combination of several elements - regular programming, dual-feed DVR features, plus e-mail, Web browsing and interactivity - has mass-market potential, something WebTV has never approached. While Sony and Thomson say that a ship date was never set, Microsoft had planned a lavish ad campaign in advance of the holidays. Rob Schoeben, Microsoft's senior director of Ultimate TV planning, downplays the delay as a minor glitch. "We are shipping for the holiday," he says. "It will launch a little softer in December and harder in January." Schoeben says Microsoft and its partners can avoid further problems by waiting until all pieces of the service are in place. Making the boxes involves repeated testing with multiple software and hardware partners. And getting the boxes in stores involves extensive training of sales staff. "There have been examples of being first to market and having it come back and bite you in the ass," says Schoeben. First to market this time is TiVo, which just shipped its first combination receiver: "DirecTV with TiVo." Though it doesn't have Net access, it delivers satellite programming and DVR capabilities (albeit with only a single feed in the initial version). TiVo has strong backing from AOL, which invested $200 million and owns 13 percent of the company with an option to buy up to 30 percent over the next year, and DirecTV, which is owned by GM's Hughes Electronics division and owns 12 percent of TiVo. While Microsoft's continuing inability to get TV services to market in a timely fashion is embarrassing, it won't ruin the software giant's chances in the fledgling DVR market. "It's not good, but it's not a disaster," says Jim Penhune, an analyst with the Yankee Group. "If the market was going great guns and you couldn't meet the demand - case in point: Sony's Play