BT Vision throws Microsoft Mediaroom under a bus for Linux
UK hybrid TV service BT Vision plans to be the first customer to discard Microsoft's Mediaroom software, almost imminently, after at least a year-long effort to put in completely new software building blocks to rejuvenate the service.
BT controversially refused to launch a fully-fledged IPTV service when it finally got Vision out of the door in 2006, instead insisting that competing with a free-to-air digital terrestrial Freeview system, based on DVB-T, was pointless, and offered instead a system which merely used IPTV for the VoD delivery and also accepted the Freeview DVB-T linear broadcasts.
The BT Vision launch relied on consumer research from the 1990s when BT wanted to introduce a movies-only VoD system, but was initially prevented due to its communications dominance at the time. So as the rest of Europe introduced full multicast IPTV, BT went ahead with this hybrid, but bizarrely chose Mediaroom set-top boxes and software, whose real strength was in multicast. Later it began using the MPX content management system from ThePlatform, a US subsidiary of Comcast, but retained the Mediaroom set tops. Read more...