The wait for the ability to record television for later viewing seems to be nearing an end, however, as one industry blogger states the company is now doing internal testing for the feature, indicative of an upcoming release window.
The news of the latest rounds of testing come courtesy of Microsoft blogger Paul Thurrott, who had previously speculated that DVR features may be introduced in 2015. While Thurrott obviously missed the mark in regards to 2015, Microsoft did end up confirming that free DVR would be coming to the Xbox One in 2016 during the Gamescom conference last year.
Thurrott made the revelation in his latest blog post, where he states that the information comes from a source reportedly very close to Microsoft.
Last August, Microsoft made big steps towards making this happen when they announced a partnership with Hauppage to bring OTA peripherals to the market in the USA and Canada. The company was already selling first party Xbox One digital tuners in some select countries, but for whatever reason, North America has not made that list - though these first party devices may still come at a later date.
The functionality is supposedly being tested in a behind-the-scenes update lovingly entitled the Xbox One Threshold Beta 1603 System Update, or ’th2xboxrel_1603.160308-1900’ if you so prefer. Notably,t he update not only allows the recording of over-the-air television while Xbox One owners are watching the content itself, but also installs the ability to record content while gamers are playing games, or even while the console itself is in sleep mode.
We already knew that any kind of DVR recording would require an external HDD to work, so the news that this feature is being tested with an external HDD doesn’t come as a surprise. If anything, it looks like Microsoft is finally ramping up to release the long-awaited TV DVR functionality, and we’ll keep you posted when this announcement comes.
What do you think about TV DVR options on the Xbox One, Ranters? Did you expect the feature to take this long?
Source: Paul Thurrott
