Time-Warner Tries TV Software

AOL’s Time-Warner Cable has agreed to run a trial of Microsoft TV software, signaling a new level of cooperation between the two companies and potentially providing an important new customer for Microsoft TV.

Introduced in spring 2002, Microsoft TV Interactive Program Guide (IPG) is a software platform that works with current TV set-top boxes and is intended to provide a more navigable and searchable TV program guide than that provided by market leader Gemstar-TV Guide. However, until recently, only three minor cable companies-two in the U.S. and one in Mexico-had signed up for IPG trials. Now, the two largest U.S. cable companies, Comcast and Time-Warner, have agreed to try IPG. (The Comcast deal is less surprising because Comcast had already agreed to try a more extensive product, Microsoft TV Foundation Edition.)

Details of the Time-Warner trial are very sketchy: the IPG software will be tested in Beaumont, TX, on a cable system that includes about 100,000 homes, but it’s not clear when the trial will start or how many homes will be involved. Nonetheless, any agreement between the companies was unthinkable until the two companies settled their antitrust lawsuit in May 2003. Further deals between the companies are likely as AOL focuses more on its media business and less on other areas-for instance, in July 2003 AOL laid off 50 Web browser developers in its Netscape division, ended its ties with the open-source Mozilla browser project, and sold its CD manufacturing business.