Windows TV-2 Ready for Your Living Room?

Microsoft has a few stutter steps -- and one ridiculously successful one -- as they try to get more involved in our in-home entertainment world.

XBox Live/360 has exceeded expectations when it comes to gaming, web surfing and streaming of movies and other programming. But cracking the TV nut has eluded the software giant for nigh-on a decade.

WebTV, Microsoft TV, Ultimate TV, Mediaroom and Media Center have all hit the market and sunk.

With CES in Las Vegas cranking up, the rumor mill is hot.

The Seattle Times' Brian Dudley has a couple of paragraphs on how the Redmond-Washington-based Microsoft is taking on Silicon Valley in the hard-drive-television space:

These new Windows TV boxes have been glimpsed online since Microsoft unveiled its new embedded software lineup in April, and then again at an Intel conference in September.

The boxes are expected to cost around $200 and go on sale later this year. They'll pose a serious challenge to the new Apple and Google TV devices, largely because the Windows boxes have a polished and familiar TV-program guide that makes it easy to blend and navigate both online and broadcast content.

After all, Google has slowed the release of Google TV until "training" can be sorted out:

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