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[Berk Boyraz]

From MSFT's side, I think it's more about adding value to their already excellent Xbox Live Gold service, and if they attract more customers to subscribe to Gold because of the features they're adding, great.

On the other hand, I've been a cord cutter for years. Why pay for a ton of content I don't care about when I can get most of the content I want for free? The rest of the content I want can either be watched via my quite cheap streaming-only Netflix account or by purchasing DVDs.

This Verizon FiOS deal doesn't do much for me. It's much the same as the Hulu deal with MSFT where you can only access the Hulu content on XBL Gold if you subscribe to Hulu Plus (which I have no reason or desire to do). Because the cable companies refuse to change, they're becoming irrelevant.

Yeah, well, it might not do a lot of that. I picked up an xbox at a garage sale with the intention of using it solely for streaming netflix. I didn't know that you had to subscribe to MS's service to be able to do that. It angered me, as Netflix doesn't (or shouldn't) actually use the xbox live service, doesn't add any value to the netflix service, almost doubles the cost of the service, and I'd get to give yet more money to Microsoft in exchange for exactly nothing.

The xbox went to the goodwill, and I've warned a few other people who were thinking of doing the same thing to avoid using the xbox for it. If Microsoft was a little less greedy, they may have actually sold me some games and made some money from me, instead of leaving a bad taste in my mouth.

I think you vastly underestimate how much you'd pay on an a la carte basis for the niche channels you list. AMC Networks has operating expenses of about $750 million. They obviously get revenue from ad sales, but the bulk of their revenue comes from cable operators. If instead of receiving payments from the 96 million US households that get AMC programming, they had to be paid by the households that actually want AMC programming (their highest-rated program, The Walking Dead, drew 6.6 million viewers Sunday night), the costs would be very high.

Cable providers just don't git it. All there off brand channels are only financially successful because of bundling channels. If you AMC's viewership is 96 Million, just think how few other really off brand cable channels reach.

I cut the cord about 2-3 years ago. Subscribed to NetFlix. Haven't looked back, doubt I will. Wake me up with HBO and Showtime(the only two cable offerings I really miss) are available w/o a monthly subscription to the crap that currently goes with them, and I'm in.

Would like to make a post about xbox .During the summer I paid for internet for the house so my boys had a gold membership that stopped in august .I find out today that my credit card has been charged the last 2 months for live which we do not use nor new we had .I run my laptop off my phone .If you think you have to have live I would wipe out your credit card info from your unit as I was told by Microsoft ANYONE can get into it and you to will be paying someone's funtime .Microsoft being the greedy people they are would of course not refund my money .

I'm a bit confused by the article. I think the author is ranting a little too much against cable companies and just not appreciating what is happening here. Picture this: Your house doesn't have every single room wired with a coaxial cable. You don't want to spend a ton of money wiring your house. You've got a room you would like your kids to watch Nick, Nick Jr, or Cartoon Network but this room has no coaxial. Now here's where it gets interesting. Your Xbox 360 is streaming live TV through the Internet. This isn't pre-recorded data files sitting on a Netflix or Hulu server. This is LIVE TV being streamed straight to your Xbox 360 through Wfi. In other words, this is (as far as I know) the first time you've been able to watch cable TV wirelessly. Sure there's the added expense of Xbox Live Gold but you can get those cards cheap if you look for discounts/sales AND you're not renting a cable box for $5-$10 a month.

A few days ago my roommates and myself changed the name of our wifi and since then myself and my other roommate have been unable to "Get Teredo IP" on our XBOX and are unable to play on XBOX live. We can watch Netflix on our Xbox's and access the internet, however we are both unable to play games on xbox live (i.e. access COD servers). Since this problem is happening to both of our consoles I believe it is a problem with our wifi, if anyone has experienced this before please let me know. It is rather frustrating.

I'm also unable to get a Teredo IP address, completely unrelated to SSID. I just upgraded from 600 to Fibre+, and since installing the new hardware, my NAT has been unavailable. I've verified my port forwarding is correct & power cycled my gateway with no success. Ideas?

If you're a video-game aficionado, you know the answer: It's Microsoft's latest game console, and it arrived in North America and Europe on Friday. To gamers, Xbox means cutting-edge adventures such as "Halo" and "Gears of War," and well as the brand that brought online competition to the masses through Xbox Live.

But Microsoft wants you to think of Xbox One as more than a game machine. You can use it to watch movies on Netflix and Hulu Plus. You can hook it up to your cable box to watch live TV. You can Skype your grandma and share family photos through the SkyDrive storage service.

The Xbox One is a chunky black box that's a little larger than its predecessor, the Xbox 360. It arrives with a respectable library of 22 titles, all sold separately. By and large, they look just as pretty as their counterparts on Sony's PlayStation 4, which came out last week.

The most significant distinction between the two is the re-engineered Kinect camera that's packaged with every Xbox. Like the one for its Xbox 360 predecessor, it lets you use voice commands and gestures to navigate on-screen menus and some apps, but it's much more precise and responsive than before. On the PS4, a similar camera sells for $60, but Sony's pitching it as an accessory rather than an essential part of the experience.

Setting up the Xbox was easy. You connect the Kinect to the Xbox and the Xbox to the TV. You sign in or create a free Microsoft account, download some software updates and calibrate the Kinect. Despite earlier threats that the console would need to be always connected to the Internet, Microsoft now says constant connection isn't necessary after the initial setup.

The "Home" section is dominated by a large image of your most recently opened game or app. Smaller icons show the four apps you used before that. To the left is your user profile. To the right are links to available games and Xbox Live recommendations.

The most innovative button on the Home page is called "Snap." It lets you shift one app to the upper right corner of the screen while using another app. For example, I played "Forza Motorsport 5" on the main screen while a live broadcast of a college football game ran in the Snap window. If the gridiron action got interesting, I could quickly switch it to the main display.

The entire interface can be navigated by voice command with the Kinect. To watch live TV, for example, you say, "Xbox, watch TV." To play a game like "Killer Instinct," you say, "Xbox, go to 'Killer Instinct.' "

After a few hours, I got pretty good at getting the machine to follow my orders. As a longtime Xbox user, however, I still found it easier and more intuitive to use the Xbox One's handheld controller, which looks and feels similar to previous Xbox controllers.

You can also navigate the on-screen menus using Xbox SmartGlass, a free app for iOS, Android or Windows 8 devices, including Microsoft's Surface tablet. If you're in the middle of a game, SmartGlass can display additional instructions or the Achievements you've earned. It's far from essential, but it could be interesting to see what developers do with that second screen.

The Xbox One uses custom-designed chips from Advanced Micro Devices Inc. It cannot play games for the Xbox 360, but Xbox One owners probably will want only state-of-the-art titles anyway. After initially threatening a digital-rights scheme that would have blocked games previously played on other Xbox Ones, Microsoft reversed course and now says you'll be able to buy, sell and trade used games as much as you want.

Microsoft promises eight times the graphical performance of the Xbox 360. The images in the games I tried are on par with the PS4's - as detailed and realistic as anything yet produced by a living-room console.

"Forza Motorsport 5," the latest auto racing simulator from Microsoft's Turn 10 Studios, takes full advantage of the Xbox One's graphic oomph. You can see the attention to detail in every car. From the driver's seat, you can read every instrument on the dashboard. The beauty extends to the gorgeous environments, from the Bernese Alps to the streets of Prague to famous racetracks like the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

"Ryse: Son of Rome," an original adventure from the German studio Crytek, revels in the glory of ancient Athens. But gamers are more likely to be stunned by its copious gore, as centurions hack and slash their way through hordes of barbarian invaders.

"Ryse" tries to incorporate voice commands as well. At times, you're expected to orally order your legions to charge the enemy or block incoming attacks. But you can accomplish the same things by pressing buttons, which I resorted to after the troops ignored my shouts a few times.

However you decide to control it, though, the Xbox One is a versatile, powerful machine that should be able to deliver inventive high-definition games for a long time. Between the Xbox One and the PlayStation 4, the new generation of gaming is off to a roaring start.

I highly recommend a laptop. You can go to Xbox live. Wireless Xbox controller. Easier on space. Piggyback off your phone's internet. Alienware R17 is nice? add a terabyte or two for an external hard drive and reload when you go home.

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