Microsoft Buys VideoSoft To Use In Xbox Live Video Discovery [Microsoft's Video Ambitions Take On New Life By Picking Up VideoSoft To Help Users Find Things To Watch]

Posted on TFTS by Steve Anderson on Tuesday, 22. November 2011 under: Audio,Visual, Computer/Console Gaming, Internet Highlights

We’ve been following Microsoft’s designs on the streaming video market for some time now, and it’s become steadily more clear that they want to turn the Xbox 360 into an all-around entertainment hub. They’ve been moving in that direction for some time now, incorporating things like Bing and Kinect into the proceedings, but now they’ve picked up one more that should go a long way toward helping their cause: VideoSurf.

We’ve heard about VideoSurf before, a technology that allows you to find things to watch suited to your tastes rapidly and without incident, but putting VideoSurf into Xbox Live should make things quite a bit simpler. See, under normal circumstances, searching out videos can be difficult, especially of the user generated variety. Most such titles are searched by file names or tags and the like, so your search for “cute cat videos” may generate everything from adorable kittens playing with yarn to some underage sociopath’s idea of fun with a roadkill video, or maybe even some guy talking about politics who intentionally labeled his video as a “cat video” to get misdirected clicks.

But VideoSurf, meanwhile, can actually make decisions based on the content of the video itself, so searches for “cute cat videos” won’t end up with you sifting through a bunch of stuff you don’t want to see. And adding VideoSurf technology to Xbox Live should improve the search functions and make it much more likely that you’ll find the stuff you want to see when you actually want to see it. Of course, this is all still dependent on just what content Microsoft can get in the first place–you can have the greatest search function in the world, but if you don’t have anything to search through, what’s the point? Still though, based on the earlier reports we’ve heard so far, Microsoft shouldn’t be lacking much in the content sphere.

So what do you guys think here? Will we be looking at plenty of extra value added to make the Xbox Live experience a vastly improved platform from which to watch television? Or are we looking more at another flash in the pan from Redmond that will go over like a lead balloon? No matter what you think about this one, we always love hearing from you, and the comments section below is just the place to weigh in!