Microsoft Innovation Making Entertainment Easy

A new video from Microsoft offers a glimpse into how technological innovation will dramatically change the way in which users consume entertainment content in the future.

And the “future” term is used loosely, since, in a sense, the future is already here. The video embedded bellow reveals demos of Kinect for Xbox 360, Microsoft’s console used as an entertainment hub rather than a gaming platform, the Tellme voice recognition technology, and the Bing search / decision engine all working in tandem.

“Our philosophy is pretty simple: All the entertainment you want, with the people you care about, made easy… This video brings that philosophy to life, while showing off what the combination of Xbox, Kinect, Bing and voice recognition can do for your entertainment experience,” reveals Frank X. Shaw, Corporate Vice President, Corporate Communications, Microsoft.

Users need to look forward to a world in which the TV remote will go the way of the eight-track tapes or audio cassettes.

Speaking of which, analog TV is also heading the same way, replaced by digital TV served through Internet-ready TV sets, and on-demand multi-media services for all devices.

“At Microsoft, we believe there’s also a shift underway in how consumers access and control this ever-growing avalanche of TV shows, sports programming, movies, online videos, video games, music and more,” Shaw stated.

The software giant is right on the money. And the company has already demoed new technology capable of dealing with the evolution of multi-media and entertainment content.

After all, users need innovative interaction models tailored to the future of entertainment. No longer are they passive consumers, but actively involved, interacting, sharing, collaborating.

Analog media delivery technologies have never been able to put users center-stage, but products such as Xbox, Kinect and Bing certainly enable content consumption to start with something as simple as uttering a few words or as any number of their everyday natural gestures.

“Integration of products and services like Xbox, Kinect and Bing is at the heart of our strategy. This is just one more example of how Bing is more than just Microsoft’s search engine, competing to win against Google – Bing is also a strategic asset that makes many other Microsoft products better and more attractive to our customers,” Shaw added.

“Thanks to Bing, Kinect and our voice recognition technology, we envision a future where the words “Hey, where’s the remote?” are as outdated as eight-track tapes and rotary telephones.”