Microsoft launches YouTube, TMZ, FiOS TV apps and many more on the Xbox 360 today

by Ben Gilbert on Dec 13th 2011 3:08PM

For those of you in the Xbox 360 Dashboard preview program, some of this stuff is old hat, but for the rest of us today's launch of a dozen new applications on the Dashboard is all brand new. Beyond the addition of YouTube, FiOS TV, and TMZ (can we give that one back?), Xbox 360 users get access to MSNBC content, iHeartRadio (actual radio!), and a handful of other services starting today.

Though we expected as much, certain services are region-specific and will only be available to certain audiences (Rogers On Demand only exists in Canada, for instance, as it's a Canadian cable provider). Head past the break for the official list, regions and all.

blinkbox (UK): blinkbox gives access to a wide range of movies online. With more than 10,000 movies titles movie fans can watch their favorite films immediately with no additional subscription required.
iHeartRadio (U.S.): Listen to more than 800 of the nation's most popular live broadcast radio stations from 150 U.S. cities with iHeartRadio.
MSN Video (Australia, Canada, Germany, Italy, Mexico and UK): MSN brings you the latest breaking news, sports, celebrity gossip and more from around the globe.
MSNBC.com (U.S.): MSNBC.com bring you the best of NBC News, MSNBC, Fox Sports, Access Hollywood, original programming and more, on-demand and up-to-date 24/7/365.
MUZU.TV (Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden and UK): MUZU.TV the music video site, offers nearly 80,000 music videos at your command. Brand new releases from the world's biggest artists, great music videos from every decade, up and coming bands and the latest music news and interviews.
Rogers On Demand (Canada): Rogers On Demand provides select TV shows and movies to everyone for FREE. Rogers customers can also catch up on their favorite premium programming anytime, from anywhere in Canada.
SBS ON DEMAND (Australia): SBS ON DEMAND is a catch up TV service that lets you watch full episodes, of your favorite SBS television programs.
TMZ (Canada, U.S.): Your all-access pass to the latest TMZ entertainment stories and breaking news videos everyone is talking about!
RTVE (Spain): Complete episodes from series, news programs, documentaries and the best Spanish audiovisual content from RTVE.
Verizon FiOS TV (U.S.): Get Verizon FiOS TV with 26 live channels like MTV, Spike, Food Network, Comedy Central, HBO, CNN and Nickelodeon – with more to come. Plus with Kinect, change channels with your voice.
YouTube (Available in 24 countries globally**): From your favorite web original video to gaming tips, a universe of compelling content is available through YouTube on Xbox LIVE.

Source: Major Nelson

Tags: apps, dashboard-update, dashboard-update-fall-2011, fios, iheartradio, kinect, microsoft, msnbc, verizon, verizon-fios, verizon-fios-tv, xbox, youtube

Reader Comments (78)

AWESOME SAUCE! YouTube is finally here on my Xbox!

@Mouthsmasher

It sucks as you need Gold membership to get those apps to work.

@Ballistic H

It sucks that you need to breathe air to live.

@Mouthsmasher

It is pretty weak you'd need gold to watch YouTube videos. I don't think that even debatable. But today ain't about trolling XBL Gold. I'm happy for y'all! No lie. I love getting sucked into YouTube. Start by watching bob lazar videos on area 51 and end my journey watching a cat play a keyboard or a panda sneezing. Get to it!

@Ballistic H

It says that Gold may or may not be required to use some of the apps.

Too bad HBO GO isnt up yet

@MrSmash that story image keeps taunting me... >:[

Just got FiOS TV yesterday, the app works great. I don't watch much television so having Comedy Central and Cartoon Network makes me happy. No need to purchase another box for $4-6 extra a month.

Youtube app works well, of course if you are watching old SD content it looks like crap, although that's the contents fault not the app.

Haven't tried iHeartRadio yet, I have heard good things about their mobile app counterparts so I'll make sure to check it out in time.

Anyways, this new dash has kind of enticed me to get a Kinect.

YOUTUBE FINALLY!

@(Unverified)
But is it unfiltered? Can i watch quasi-pornographic videos of urban girls shaking their fat rear ends?

@Klearwater Killer

The youtube app lets you set your level of content filtering.

Strict, Mild or Unfiltered.

@This Little Man Says His Name Is
Yes, i set it to unfiltered booty shaking.

Do you have to have Verizon FiOS to watch those channels?

Are more providers coming (DirecTV, Comcast, etc.)?

@Jeremy White I think the answers are yes and eventually.

I hope the youtube isn't shitty and slow like PS3. WOuld be cool to exit out of a game when I get stuck and look up a walkthrough on youtube.

@dvdjunkie32
Maybe it's the videos I've tried to watch (Riskay's "Smell Yo Dick", you know, the classics), but so far it doesn't seem to be significantly better than the PS3 in the performance department.

@dvdjunkie32
I just tried it out. It is much MUCH better than the PS3 youtube app. Picture quality is vastly superior and the interface is easier to deal with.

I just ordered a 360 today, but I take it these are for gold members only?

@eat it
Can't confirm with 100% certainty myself because I do have gold, but I think it's pretty much a given that Gold is required for any "additional content" (beyond games market place & Zune market place). Last.FM, Facebook & Twitter require Gold to use on the 360 for example.

@eat it

c'mon bro, you've been here how long?

@PR0F3TA

wishful thinking.

@eat it You JUST ordered today? You mean you finally gave in 6 years after launch?

@MEGATOOL Well it'll be a lot cheaper and more reliable now, not to mention 360 slim and the kinect have come out in the past couple of years. I'm a PS3 man myself, but I'd consider picking one up around now if I had the money to do so.

@eat it

My account is gold but I created a free account to test out the apps.

SBS on Demand and Youtube both told me I needed a Gold account to access them when I launched them.

MSN Video and Dailymotion let me launch it then when I went to try to play a video it popped up a message saying I needed a gold account.

@eat it

ahh it's no big deal, I'll still be using the PS3 for most of my gaming and video watching. I probably wouldn't even use these apps. I don't think I'm going to be a gold member past whatever free membership comes with the system.

sweet cant wait to check it out in a couple of hours

Dammit, when are they going to release teh Kinect features for AT&T U-Verse customers?

Like the addition of Youtube, don't like that there's a new top level category.

/yawns

@houstons85
I'm just gonna throw this out there - Yawn (and deivitives thereof) should be on par with "first' & just auto-blocked at this point. Someone feels the need to post it on prctically every article anymore.

@swooded

If the community manager here paid any attention, that dude would have been banned weeks ago.

@swooded

How do you block people?

@Darki Dreamside
I don't mean personally blocked. You can't actually block someone here, though an option like that would be awesome. Of course editing or just being able to see your own or other peoples comment history again would be even better.

I meant that I believe the site actually does automatically block posts that just say "First" or are short "First type" comments. Of cousre you can still end up with First comments, that are later removed, if they go into detail a lot of detail about how they were first. I was just saying they should add "yawn" to the "short comment auto-block" (or however it works) list is all. It seriously contributes as much as something like First does & it's showing up in a lot of articles, regardless of the platform or content.

@ThePope
It's not that great, dude. Calm down.

watching fios right now. quality is really good, channel lineup needs work... nothing like using a $400 game console to watch reruns of everybody loves raymond.

@mikeymilkshake Well, $199 console these days, as a baseline :p

I like that there is FiOS on there. I'll check in with Verizon later to see how this works. If it connects with current service free-of-charge, then count me in. This means another "tv" in the house for people to watch shows.

...but ima assume that you need a Gold account or something.

Note to Canadians: Despite what the press release says, you do in fact need to be a Rogers subscriber to use the Rogers on Demand app.

@TheOnlyNameAvailable - The pre-release tab is still there because they haven't finished testing. They're launching some of the video apps early to Preview Program participants for testing before they launch to the public (I've been using the YouTube app for a few days for example).

So we now have "TV", "Video", and "Apps". All of the apps, of course, being for video/TV channels.

Great redesign, MS. Very uncluttered. Glad you could break all those up, we wouldn't want any of the things we bought a 360 for (games and Netflix, maybe Hulu if you have H+) to get in the way of the ads on the first several pages.

Honestly, if the home tab were customizable or even automatically populated with your Quickplay list instead of having it an extra click away, the usability of this dash would skyrocket. But no, gotta make sure every view is 3/4 ads, at least until you click past four or five of them.

@Author X
get a Kinect its better that way....

@misterAKA
I have a Kinect, and it's much slower than using a controller because I have to wait with my hand over every option, not to mention that I play games at my desk, so I have to move my chair several feet back to get it to register me. Even if it were perfect with the Kinect, people who don't want to use voice or motion controls shouldn't have to buy a $100+ accessory to make their game console more navigable with a a game controller.

No matter how I'm controlling it, I'd still rather have the things I actually want and use displayed when I boot up instead of one (the disc in the system) and a whole lot of ads or submenus to access the rest.

@misterAKA

You can use RB and LB to quickly switch categories.

@ThePope

And he wasn't first, the tragically hilarious story of the mighty fail.

So I can watch PS3 game footage of The Last Of Us on the Xbox 360 with Youtube? NICE

@TheOnlyNameAvailable

I know, I wish the real background was that bright. The real one is too dark and depressing.

now if only they could fix the fact that they broke netflix! that really pisses me off

@xakari
What's broken about Netflix?

@ytilanigiroon

It's not that it's really 'broken', it's just that the new interface make it more of a pain to use. I especially hate the inconsistency of the interface (sometimes hitting B gets rid of the menu, sometimes hitting B seems to bring me all the way out of whatever I was watching), and I dislike that hitting Start no longer pauses. The old app was fine. I think I'll be switching to my PS3 as my primary Netflix tool now.

@343 Guilty Fart

The B button has always fuctioned that way. As for pausing you have to hit Start twice now. I miss selecting episodes before I actually started watching shows though. I wish there was a way to take the best of the PS3 app and the 360 app and make an awesome Netflix app.

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Microsoft launches YouTube, TMZ, FiOS TV apps and many more on the Xbox 360 today

Reader Comments (78)

Posted: Dec 13th 2011 3:12PM Mouthsmasher said

Posted: Dec 13th 2011 6:22PM Ballistic H said

Posted: Dec 13th 2011 7:08PM Tommy758 said

Posted: Dec 13th 2011 7:46PM Johnnynumber5 is powered by cell said

Posted: Dec 13th 2011 8:57PM This Little Man Says His Name Is said

Posted: Dec 13th 2011 3:18PM MrSmash said

Posted: Dec 13th 2011 8:37PM Enigma7ic said

Posted: Dec 13th 2011 3:19PM pibs said

Posted: Dec 13th 2011 3:19PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Dec 13th 2011 5:42PM Klearwater Killer said

Posted: Dec 13th 2011 8:58PM This Little Man Says His Name Is said

Posted: Dec 14th 2011 1:12PM Klearwater Killer said

Posted: Dec 13th 2011 3:21PM Jeremy White said

Posted: Dec 13th 2011 3:31PM Once known as Shadsy said

Posted: Dec 13th 2011 3:21PM dvdjunkie32 said

Posted: Dec 13th 2011 5:16PM RickGhastly said

Posted: Dec 13th 2011 7:38PM CharginChuck said

Posted: Dec 13th 2011 3:22PM eat it said

Posted: Dec 13th 2011 4:10PM swooded said

Posted: Dec 13th 2011 4:58PM PR0F3TA said

Posted: Dec 13th 2011 5:17PM eat it said

Posted: Dec 13th 2011 5:18PM MEGATOOL said

Posted: Dec 13th 2011 5:47PM Hank Hill said

Posted: Dec 13th 2011 10:11PM This Little Man Says His Name Is said

Posted: Dec 14th 2011 9:10AM eat it said

Posted: Dec 13th 2011 3:22PM CNOLA85 said

Posted: Dec 13th 2011 3:24PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Dec 13th 2011 3:24PM 343 Guilty Fart said

Posted: Dec 13th 2011 3:26PM houstons85 said

Posted: Dec 13th 2011 3:52PM swooded said

Posted: Dec 13th 2011 4:13PM baby sea tuna said

Posted: Dec 13th 2011 6:45PM Darki Dreamside said

Posted: Dec 13th 2011 8:10PM swooded said

Posted: Dec 13th 2011 3:28PM pluupy said

Posted: Dec 13th 2011 3:29PM mikeymilkshake said

Posted: Dec 13th 2011 5:04PM JasonGW said

Posted: Dec 13th 2011 3:34PM pluupy said

Posted: Dec 13th 2011 3:36PM Mcmax3000 said

Posted: Dec 13th 2011 3:37PM Mcmax3000 said

Posted: Dec 13th 2011 3:42PM Author X said

Posted: Dec 13th 2011 3:52PM misterAKA said

Posted: Dec 13th 2011 4:05PM Author X said

Posted: Dec 14th 2011 1:20PM Ordeith said

Posted: Dec 13th 2011 3:52PM Drago Dracini said

Posted: Dec 13th 2011 4:01PM andrewpoe said

Posted: Dec 13th 2011 4:19PM shabby329 said

Posted: Dec 13th 2011 4:30PM xakari said

Posted: Dec 13th 2011 4:56PM ytilanigiroon said

Posted: Dec 13th 2011 5:05PM 343 Guilty Fart said

Posted: Dec 13th 2011 6:49PM Bubbameister33 said

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