Ars Technica ran a story this morning with more bad news for free-TV viewers. Microsoft quietly sent an email to Xbox users who stream over-the-air TV on that platform through a Hauppauge USB tuner to a mobile device. It read in part, “You may have streamed TV content using a USB TV tuner from your Xbox console to the Xbox app. In 30 days, the Xbox app on iOS and Android will no longer support this functionality.” The Windows 10 app will continue to work.

This is reminiscent of Microsoft’s former commitment to the Windows Media Center, which was a pretty good way to watch and record OTA TV until Microsoft turned its back on it. WMC had been on some versions of Windows XP and Vista, then was included in almost all versions of Windows 7. For whatever reason, Microsoft stopped caring at about that point. For Windows 8, WMC was available only as a pricey add-on, then Windows 10 dropped it altogether.

In other words, it’s another example of Kilgore’s second law: It’s hard to monetize what folks get for free. A feature that helps buyers watch OTA TV can be a helpful selling point for that first hardware purchase, but there needs to be an economic reason to continue supporting that feature. Folks such as Tablo and TiVo sell subscriptions. Google probably uses Live Channels viewer data to sell more ads pointed at those viewers. Maybe Microsoft will tie OTA TV support to one of its Xbox subscription services. Until that happens, it might not have enough incentive to keep supporting free TV. If you rely on Xbox-served OTA TV, you have been warned.