Your Xbox One will soon be able to record live television shows and beam them to other devices, Microsoft announced at German games conference Gamescom on Tuesday.
An Xbox One console, starting next year, will act as a DVR for live television shows. It's a service targeted at those who get cable channels over the air through a digital tuner; it will only work with over-the-air TV in the U.S. and Canada and Free-to-Air TV in the U.K. (Hauppauge and Xbox sell one for $60.)
The Xbox One's TV DVR will use an external hard drive to store television shows, meaning your collection can only be limited by how much space you have there. (Though with many Xbox One games having quite large 40-60 gig downloads, your mileage may vary.)
Xbox One owners will be able to schedule and view their recordings via the console's OneGuide, which mashes a typical TV guide with on-demand features. The DVR also offers features offered by many cable providers: you can schedule recordings from your mobile devices, either a Windows phone or a iOS or Android device with the Xbox One SmartGlass app.
Shows can also be downloaded for offline viewing to those same devices, along with Windows tablets.
The service will be free, Microsoft said, and rolling out to select territories in 2016.