FiOS media extender capabilities previewed
By Steven Kim 
posted Oct 15th 2007 1:57PM
posted Oct 15th 2007 1:57PM
HD-hero Dave Zatz was the first person outside of Verizon to get a preview of their upcoming media extender functionality for FiOS, and he came away impressed. Expect his preview to cover a few posts, but installment #1 is up on his blog. First up, the Media Manager/Interactive Media Guide combo is getting richer navigation for music and photos. Nice, but more significant is the addition of video streaming. A variety of video formats will be transcoded on-the-fly to MPEG2. Currently, the resolution of the source material isn't scaled, but Dave mentions that we could see that change for release. There's a raft of other features in development that were shown off (including already-hinted-at remote scheduling and casual games), so check out the link and start waiting for the release over Q4 2007 - Q2 2008.
The 360 is an Extender, and can be used as an IPTV set-top box. Anyone know if it works with FIOS?
360's IPTV capability will only work with service providers who use Microsoft's Mediaroom IPTV platform (http://microsoft.com/mediaroom).
Verizon used to use Mediaroom for its FiOS TV service (and until last summer, its set-top-boxes ran Mediaroom software, though in a standard QAM setup).
But Verizon was frustrated at the slow pace and buggy, cumbersome nature of Mediaroom, so they went with a new software platform for its Interactive Media Guide. I don't know whether it's in-house or a different TV platform vendor.
Whether they go back to Mediaroom for their upcoming IPTV rollout remains to be seen.
For now, the only way FiOS will work with the 360 is through the use of a Digital Cable Ready Windows Vista box.
Thank you! I've been looking everywhere for this information, and couldn't find it. Thanks!