Advanced Television

Imagenio launches on Xbox Live with gesture control

December 1, 2011

From David Del Valle in Madrid

Telefonica’s IPTV service Movistar Imagenio (with over 800,000 subs) will be available from next week through Microsoft’s console Xbox 360 to the 160,000 existing users of the Xbox Live Gold (with a current potential reach of 1 million Xbox-equipped customers). The service is free of charge the first three months.

Xbox 360 users will be able to access 12 TV channels from their consoles with sports, music and cinema as the main content. The service will not require a traditional remote control since, thanks to Kinect, customers will manage it by using voice and gesture control. To have access to the service, users will need an Xbox 360, an active account on Microsoft’s online platform, Xbox Live, and a downloadable application from the Xbox 360 Internet platform.

The initial Imagenio’s package on Xbox includes Gol TV, Eurosport, Eurosport 2, Xtreme Sports, ESPN, Iberalia, Marca TV, Teledeporte, RTVE’s La 1 and Canal 24 horas, MTV Espana and Canal Promocional. In a later phase, Imagenio plans to launch more channels on the console and added-value services, such as VoD and even HD TV channels that would require a 10 Mb connection. No fees have been revealed yet after the promotional period.

Maria Garaña, president of Microsoft Spain, said “what the customer wants is a multi-device platform and our idea is that this platform may migrate to different devices, including mobile.”

This is the first Microsoft step into the TV business in Spain but will not be the last one as the company does not rule out reaching similar agreement with other distribution platforms. The deal with Telefonica may also be replicated in those countries where the Spanish telco company is present such as Brazil.

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