Microsoft's Zune team is looking for someone "to help deliver great digital entertainment features into the living room," according to a job posting at the company's Web site.
So it seems Microsoft will be attempting some sort of home entertainment solution involving Zune software. The job description for Software Development Engineer reads, in part:
"Primary responsibilities include development of innovative user interfaces for delivering a rich, deep interactive media consumption experience in a living room environment. Experience with online services API development is a must, product will provide a rich online media experience delivering music and video from the cloud. A passion for UX and digital media is a must."
What could it be, then? IStartedSomething, which spotted the ad, speculates that Microsoft is either working on a Zune media service for the Xbox 360 or a standalone set-top box similar to the Apple TV. I'm willing to throw out the former option, as the Xbox already has pretty deep multimedia capabilities already. The only thing that's missing there is television, and there's no reason to add Zune branding for that alone. A set top box seems more likely, in my opinion, and the mention of "cloud" makes me think streaming media from outside the home is in the works.
It's worth noting that Microsoft reorganized the Zune team into hardware and software divisions earlier this year, with the latter group focusing on bringing Zune to other "tuners" besides the namesake portable media player. No matter what comes of this job hire, sleep soundly knowig that Microsoft will soon be all up in your den.
