XBox 360, Hulu and Project Natal Could Do For On Demand Television What Apple Did For Digital Music

News has recently been trickling out from Microsoft news sources that the XBox 360 may be introducing Hulu to their online service, and if they combine that with a great hand-waving interface it could become the most important television set-top box in the home. Imagine sitting on your couch and waving your hands to access Hulu, then typing "The Office" on an onscreen keyboard and being presented with the 5 latest episodes of The Office, viewable immediately. You make a little point gesture and the show begins to play. If Microsoft achieves this experience they may be able to do to on demand television what Apple did for digital music. Hulu is a commercial-supported video streaming site that focuses on high-quality content from broadcast networks like Fox, NBC, ABC and others, and there's no doubt that their selection is excellent. Project Natal is a new "controller-free" device about to be released for the XBox that allows you to control the screen with just your hands. A video is included. In the video, the last few scenes had people browsing through icons of content by waving their hands. The last scene had a mother and father scanning through Netflix icons to choose which movie they wanted. If Hulu were to appear on the XBox, then that list won't just include movies, but will include all the most popular television shows on 3 of the 4 major broadcast networks available today. With that, Microsoft will have a viable competing candidate for the most prominent set top box of the house. The question is whether the family will adopt an XBox based TV service rather than what they're currently using (TiVo, PVR, regular Cable box), and that question comes down to ease of use. If my family can't find the show they're looking for in a few minutes using the XBox interface, they're going to get frustrated. Imagine if the iPhone didn't have easy swipe browsing, big icons or the one big 'home' button: a lot of users wouldn't be able to find what they wanted as easily as they did. For this reason, I think that if Microsoft can make this Natal interface something special, integrate well with Hulu and allow users to easily search with an onscreen keyboard or excellent voice recognition, they'll be able to give television watchers what they've wanted for years: a favorite teleivision show, on demand, for no additional cost. That's a powerful proposition. Let us know what you think in the comments below.

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XBox 360, Hulu and Project Natal Could Do For On Demand Television What Apple Did For Digital Music

Neil Vidyarthi

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Neil Vidyarthi