The TV Wars Heat Up: Microsoft Brings NUAds, Google Buys SageTV and Apple TV Rumors Circulate

We’ve seen browser wars and search engine wars and mobile operating wars and it’s pretty clear where the next battle will be fought – your TV. And expect the same players to be there – it’s Microsoft, Google and Apple coming right at you. Microsoft is continuing to show off Kinect and Xbox and how they can integrate the experience while Google buys a DVR and place-shifting company and Apple…well they’re the ever present wild card.

First up is Microsoft who, as you probably know, already announced that Xbox will integrate into your cable boxes later in the year. But today they introduced their latest service – NUAds or Natural User interface Ads. These are ads that low through your Kinect to you and are fully interactive. here’s how lifestylesdefined explained it:

NUADs is a whole new type of interactive marketing. The idea is simple enough but innovative enough to offer a new lease on commercials and ADs. For instance, while watching the Pepsi ad, you can simply say “xbox tweet” to have the ad pause, pull up the twitter app and send off a quick tweet about the ad. Another use case, while watching an ad about a TV show, you can say “xbox schedule” and have the xbox send you a text message when the next episode is airing. Although these interactions are cool, the possibilities are endless.

And you have to check out this video to see how slick it is and you’ll immediately see how powerful this platform is.

OK next up is Google. Yeah they already have GoogleTV but that has a ways to go. Well Google acquired SageTV on Monday. SageTV has two keys – they do DVR through your computer and tv place shifting (like Sling). You don’t need to think about this one too hard to think about where they are going with this. There will be Android integration here and I’m still thinking that a cloud component will work its way in but before anything else, this is going to be integrated into GoogleTV as a DVR/Slingbox and that’s a pretty impressive add-on.

But don’t expect Apple to sit on its thumbs. This one comes up more than rumors of a retina display on the iPad but again, someone with loose lips is said to be providing info on an iOS powered TV and even stating that Apple will sell you a TV with iOS baked in. It really seems like more of a question of time than anything since full iOS integration seems pretty inevitable.

So let’s sit back and see where this goes but expect the wars for your TV to heat up over the next 18 months and within 5 years it’ll be a full on assault for your eyes wherever they are. And whatever they do to your tv they’ll be tying into your phone so they will find you and you will embrace it.

And if you made it this far, one more shoutout to Life Styles Defined hitting you up with fashion, tech, cars and trends and everything hot. Good stuff fellas.