About this news article

There have been at least a few claims that offering IPTV would have a significant impact on the current Blu-ray and HD-DVD format war, and perhaps might even end it.  Curiously, while this article elaborates about how many places Microsoft has established a presence in to meet potential subscriber demand, there is one issue at hand that will be a part of IPTV:  DRM.

Interestingly, the article does not state how many subscribers per region of the world Microsoft expects to have, although it anticipates "subscriber growth."  What kind of percentage growth does Microsoft anticipate, one wonders?  Also, what kind of holdups could be caused if the middleware required changing?  Is this something that can be reasonably coordinated and streamlined to be efficient, or is the prospect of too many variables in adjusting any one part of the network likely to become too big of a headache to properly fix?  Additionally, how much will a subscription cost per month and what restrictions will apply to each potential package offering?  There are only two things that are certain:  the article states IPTV should begin establishing a presence in late 2007 into 2008; the other thing is that it will contain DRM.  Will just the DRM alone keep large numbers of customers away?