Microsoft IPTV...
"Microsoft has the majority of its TV business through traditional incumbent telcos"
Er, *what* TV business, please? In the UK, there's BT Vision, where BT now admit that watching "as live" "on demand" needs a 4Mbit or faster DSL service, vs the promised (and much more widely available) 2Mbit. Afaik there isn't any other major telco anywhere in the world who has actually rolled out MS IPTV on a significant commercial basis, but feel free to provide references in case I've missed it recently. There certainly wasn't much evidence of live MS IPtv last time I checked, which afaict leaves BT Vision customers as paying participants in an extended beta test (not that different from any other MS customer, I suppose).
Maybe former Register IPtv regular contributor Alexander Cameron at Digital TX could enlighten us about the status of MS IPtv, or does the status of his company news and blog, both untouched since around January, reflect the true state of the IPtv market?