Microsoft's Xbox Live Video: HDTV and HD movie downloads for your 360
By Ryan Block 
posted Nov 6th 2006 9:00PM
posted Nov 6th 2006 9:00PM
This may sound a bit familiar to those paying close attention, but on November 22nd -- the year anniversary for the Xbox 360 -- Microsoft is announcing something fairly momentus, not for the gaming community, but for the CE industry. The Xbox 360, along with Akimbo, will be among the first mass-market devices able to download high def television programs -- and the first we know of in the states able to download HD movies. The service is called Xbox Live Video, and the fall update enables customers to spend their Microsoft points on standard and HD television from CBS, MTV, Comedy Central, VH1, Turner, and UFC, as well as HD movies from Warner Bros., Paramount, and so on. We're still a little in shock, ourselves, that Microsoft was able to in one fell swoop hit TiVo, Apple, Netflix, and a handful of others, but looking at Live over the last year, the move isn't that massively surprising. Of course, not even the vision of on-demand HD movies and TV downloads in six million homes at the flick of a switch could be without its variety of niggling concerns; being that we all know the devil's in the details, click on to get the particulars of the service. - Microsoft has not yet disclosed pricing for downloads, but it will be in Microsoft points.
- Movies will be "rental" only, TV for "purchase" only.
- At launch there will be over 800 hours of SDTV, and 200 hours of HDTV.
- Neither TV nor movies are streamed; they are only downloaded, although you can stream short preview clips from the Live interface.
- You can only download content to your Xbox 360 drive -- not to an external drive.
- Your "purchased" TV programs can be downloaded an infinite amount of times to an infinite amount of consoles; you may also play them back on friends' 360s with your removable drive.
- Deleted TV shows can be re-downloaded later; HDTV shows can be re-downloaded in either HDTV or SD.
- Movies can be watched an unlimited number of times the first 24 hours. Plays after that period will cost the same as the initial download, although the movie data isn't necessarily deleted. You can keep the movie data on your drive up to 14 days without re-downloading it.
- Downloads are in VC-1 (aka WMVHD) at 720p, 6.8Mbps video with 5.1 surround.
- An average HD movie download should be between 4-5GB, and a two hour SD movie would be 1.6GB.
- An average 1 hour (44 min) HDTV download should be about 2.2GB, and an average 1/2 hour (22 min) HDTV download should be about 1GB. A 1 hour SDTV download should be about 600MB, and a 1/2 hour SDTV download should be about 300MB.
- This service will not be available for MSN TV users, Vongo subscribers, or any other Microsoft partners. It is Xbox Live only.
- You cannot download programs through the Xbox Live web interface -- they can only be transported to your 360's removable drive.
- There aren't any drive announcements being made, so if your puny 20GB Xbox drive is near or at capacity, you're out of luck, kid.
- Aqua Teen Hunger Force
- Avatar: The Last Airbender
- Batman Forever
- Breaking Bonaduce
- Carpocalypse
- Chappelle's Show
- CSI
- Hogan Knows Best
- Jackass: The Movie
- Jericho
- The Matrix
- M:i:III
- Nacho Libre
- Nicktoons Network Animation Festival
- Numb3rs
- Pimp My Ride
- Race Rewind (NASCAR NEXTEL Cup Series races)
- Raising the Roofs
- The Real World
- Robot Chicken
- Skyland
- South Park
- SpongeBob SquarePants
- Star Trek (original)
- Superman Returns
- 50 fights from Ultimate Fighting Championship, and some episodes from The Ultimate Fighter
:-D who gives a monkeys about HDDVD and Blue Ray when you can just download HD content through your xbox! AWESOME!
Hey does anyone or has anyone heard if this will be happening in Canada? If so when.
http://www.gmboards.com has great sources to find HD videos and good quality movies online.
Wow great stuff by Microsoft not for the gamers and computer workers but for the household persons..........
http://www.pcs4cheap.ca/
Won't somebody think about the tubes???
How long until it gets to Canada though there always seems to be some type of delay getting here.
And so it begins...
Fantastic move by Microsoft.
Delicious!
If they do not have a larger hard drive in the works this is going to suck!
Anyone else forsee larger hard drives avalible for purchase shortly? Maybe in the 100GB range?
I think that a larger drive will launch at the last moment, or before Christmas.
This is AWESOME news and in my opinion a great move, but where are the larger Hard Drives Microsoft?
So..... this feature sucks unless they make something larger than 20gbs to store all that data. And while I understand compression technologies, If an HD movie can be 5GBS of data, why Blu-Ray and HD-DVD? These downloadable "HD" programs must still look drastically inferior. There is no way they are in resolutions close to what physical media can produce right now. No way. As for moving in the right direction. Microsoft gets a pat on the back. But they do need to step their removable hard drive game up 20gbs is pitiful for all of this content!
Obviously the HD movies will be more compressed than what you might find on an HD-DVD disc, but that doesn't mean they'll suck by any means. I've seen WMVHD DVDs that look great. I imagine these will be similar in quality to broadcast HD (which uses MPEG2; MS will provide the movies in VC-1, which blows MPEG2 away and allows for greater compression without much loss in quality).
And think of practicality - how many people want to spend time downloading a 20GB movie? 5GB is more practicle, and at $3 a movie (1/8th the cost of HD-DVD), you'll definitely get your money's worth.
I'm willing to bet that the MS downloads are 720p rather than 1080p, which, well, makes a pretty big difference in file size.
wow this is going to be awesome watching ATHF from my 360 in glorious high def. now all we need is a 750 gb and i will be ready to crap my pants
Very awesome move indeed. Having predicted this a long time ago (not that it was hard), I am also calling that this will be tied into the marketplace for the Zune. A TV or movie purchase (and you know they will do movie purchases) can be downloaded as HD, SD, or Zune size, all for one price. I mean, they said Zune will have video downloads based on Microsoft points, and they are announcing it for the Zune soon as well.
Microsoft, you've already offered Battlestar Galactice episode for download on Live, even if they were only teasers and summaries. Please, please, pleases, offer BSG in HD. Trust me, I'll buy them all.
Now if only they'd hook this up with the zune and media center, MS could look to take over the market.
Larger drives for the 360 are now a must, otherwise there is barely any room on the drive, especially if you already have it filled with game demos!
what would actually be a good solution, is to just allow data storage on external USB hard drives.
Wow... This will be cool if they do it right and price them right. If they can release Movies in HD for less than the cost of renting a movie from Blockbuster, they are going to get my money. Especially while HDDVD and BluRay duke it out. I don't have to spend any money on any other devices to watch HD content.. I'm very excited about this.
I'm sure someone is going to talk about the 20GB drive limitation.. For movies it won't matter because they are rental only.. So, after the rental period you might as well just delete.. For TV shows that you purchase, it would be nice to keep.. However, the ability to redownload as many times as you'd like is nice.. You could delete after watching, then if you wanted to watch again you could just redownload..
Important things to watch are going to be download speeds and prices.. Will they stream it or will it be download then watch.. If download then watch, the speed needs to be VERY quick.. I don't want to wait 3 - 4 hours for something to download.. As far as price, iTunes is at $1.99 for less than standard def versions.. So, I don't think I would pay more than $3.00 (~240-250 MS Points) for an hour long HDTV Show..
I'm under the impression that one can change the default 20GB HDD size and still download MS video without issue as long as it's on the default HDD socket.
I suppose I would typically be considered an "Apple fanboy" but this mainly due to Apple ususally havin the best option for seamless internet/computer/multimedia entertainment, however, Microsoft really seems to have something here. I hope, for their sake, that they allow one to port their movies and TV shows to their Zune players. I image such an option may actually start to make a dent in Apple's iPod/iTunes Store and --soon to be-- iTV market.
Why couldn't one use that adapter that sits between the 360 drive and the console to transfer movies to an external drive?
Why not 1080p downloads?
Why does MS always get things only half right?
They had better release at least a 100 gig drive soon at a very reasonable price.
They also need to release that damn HDMI cable soon.
yea i was thinkin the same thing, and then you can just use your pc as the master drive. although im not sure if the device being talked about is for everyone. that is can everyone understand how to use it, but i get exactly what you're saying..
Probably because there is almost no content in 1080p. The files will be larger and in the end, if you are that anal about it, you shouldn't be looking at things on a 360 anyway.
Spend more money on a top of the line system.
http://www.xbox.com/en-US/live/marketplace/moviestv.htm
Here's a movie about it.. Check it out, they show 240MS Points for TV Shows.. I GUESSED IT RIGHT!!!
320MS Points for Movies it looks like.. At least in the video Batman Forever was 320MS Points.. So, about $4.00 for a 14 day rental.. As long as all movies are that much, I don't think that's a bad deal for an HD Movie rental.. Especially since I don't have to spend $200 for an HDDVD Drive Add-On, $500 for HDDVD Standalone, or more on PS3/BluRay Player...
eric
it's not a 14day rental... it's a 24hr rental.. you don't have to download it again for 14 days but you can only play it again for the 1st 24hrs... if you want to play it again after 24hrs you need to pay again.. you just don't need to download it again...
Wicked... i KNEW that expiration date was their for a reason! HIDEF TV SHOWS thats exactly what i wanted!!!!
1080p downloads? What you want to sit their for a month downloading the tvshow? Even 720p's take a good long time for small trailers let alone full hour long shows, at 1080p it would take a day or 2 just to download for an improvement few if any would take advantage of.
I can soooo see this and zune being interlocked cant wait to see the ZunePass accessible from the xbox360 :) MUHAHAHA
As a note guys: the downloads are possible on the 20gb drive for a simple reason...
HDDVD/Bluray have 1080p video while these will be the more often used 720p and will not come with the "extras" that are also 1080p on the hddvd's... this is mainly true because also hddvd videos are smaller than bluray because hddvd uses VC1 codec which is MUCH MUCH MUCH more efficient and higher performance than blurays crappy mpeg2
Have to agree 320ms points for a 14 day rental seems spot on... im gonna be getting the hddvd addon for the movies i deem worthy... but being able to directly rent movies is gonna be awesome!
Big hard drives will be coming, or an update if it hasnt happened already that allow external hard drives. Thats going to happen, trust me.
Now on a somewhat related topic does anyone know if comcast internet still puts limitiations on broadband usage??
lol
it already takes forever to dl 300 MB demos on 360... not sure why its so slow compared to my PCs dl speeds..
dling a movie/tv show in high def your looking at over 10 hours.. EAYY
microsoft all of sudden looks like 1 amazing company-wow the revamp the company is going through is really paying off.
Bill gates kept the copmpany stuck in 84 time to move on and microsoft is doign that the right way.
Amazing and fantastic at the same time.
pat yourself on the back microsoft you are slowly started to gain 1 of your old customers back.
I'll agree with everybody about the limited hard drive space, but what about the wait times? Who here wants to wait a day to d/l a movie (or at least quite a few hours). Playing games halts downloads remember too. So, we'll all have to leave our 360's on, yet unattended while these movies download.
I'm betting on the not ready for primetime yet.. (unfortunately)
Jimmy Dean - if you re-read the article or maybe i saw it at ign.com but anyway they said they are using a totally different server for the large downloads.
Once again for Microsoft they they only go half way.. I'd love to see them get something really right but they just struggling to do it. They're thinking small time here. They are building this whole multimedia structure (media center pcs, xbox 360, the zune,other media center portables and windows handhelds) and yet they fail to successful connect it all. Why just for xbox 360?? You've already given people the ability to turn pcs into multimedia hubs and connect them with tvs. Why not use this service in conjuction with media center and the upcoming vista. Not only that but connect it with the upcoming Zune and other portable players. This would give you a system that could beat apple's itunes store. It would have a super large customer base and would draw in many other portable players where apple only has 1. Or enhance the ability of the zune by making it connected only with that. But make a system that makes sense. You would then a have a video store with more options than itunes and a subscription music store(another option apples doesn't have). However, apple knows how to get it right. THey expand from the top down. They give you the media on your computer and ipods and then are now trying to move it to the TV. Microsoft could leapfrog them by doing it with already exsistent hardware. I hope they see that potential and fix it.
What does it mean "transported to your 360's removable drive"? Will we have to put it on a DVD or something? Or worse, have to do a link to your PC. It wouldn't be that bad, but Microsoft doesn't play well with my Mac.
It's quite funny how everyone mentions 100G HDD as a good size. This is 2006 people, a 250G HDD would be acceptable, but you know they'll give you a 100G at 250G prices, and everyone will be happy. Because it's so much bigger than 20.
*sigh*
I was just thinking the same thing. 100 gigs isn't enough, but you're right, everyone will be content to pay lots of money for it.
It's true that the 360 uses a 2.5 inch drive as opposed to the 3.5" ones found in desktop computers, but so what? Make the hard drive attachment a little bigger and put in a 3.5". I doubt anyone would have a problem with it. It would even make sense to your average consumer. More space, larger drive. Probably won't happen, so either way I just hope they're smart about the price.
Ian:
I don't know about you, but I haven't seen too many (read: any) 250GB 2.5" SATA drives.
They should add purchase options for movies. Sure, without more storage, they'll have to delete the movie and redownload everytime they want to watch it, but I'm sure there'll be some who appreciate that option. Besdies, I suspect most people wouldn't be willing to rent a movie twice, but they would pay more to purchase a movie they otherwise might only rent once. This means more revenue for Microsoft.
Anyhow, add SciFi and NBC to that mix and price it less than iTunes, and I'm hooked.
320 points (~$4) for movies seems fine--you could pay $10 elsewhere for a digital download and keep it "forever"--but whats the replay value on that?
240 (~$3) for TV shows just seems expensive, especially if its only a rental.
They better to do something to improve transfer rates from xBox Live, otherwise it'll take 48 hours to download a movie in HD. Already it takes an hour or more to download a lousy 500 MB demo over a 7 Mbps connection (which I regularly max-out from other sources), and I have a friggin' GOLD account! Pathetic.
Actually Microsoft ANNOUNCED it today. On the year anniversary they will launch it. How do these people write for a living?
Movies will be "rental" only, TV for "purchase" only.
That's what we love about monopolies:
Every one wants movies for purchase and TV for rental so the monopoly decides to offer only the reverse
"You can only download content to your Xbox 360 drive -- not to an external drive."
So I could buy a TV show, but it's tied to the console... I can't even transfer it to my computer or even an external drive?
"Movies can be watched an unlimited number of times the first 24 hours. Plays after that period will cost the same as the initial download, although the movie data isn't necessarily deleted. You can keep the movie data on your drive up to 14 days without re-downloading it."
So if I rent a movie for x points, and if I don't watch it within 24 hours, I have to rent it again for x points? The only difference is that it's now on the HDD? After 14 days, I need to re-download it?
Sounds good if you don't read the bullets... I'll stick with Netflix.
Here's another site with more information about the launch:
http://www.computers.net/2006/11/microsoft_xbox_.html
This will help Microsoft against the new generation video game consoles coming out from Sony (Playstation 3) and Nintendo (the Wii). The Xbox 360 Live Video looks very attractive and this will allure buyers to the Xbox 360. Having the ability to download HD movies and HD television programs is great. This beats going to the video store and paying late fees, and it is also faster than Netflix. Instead of mailing out your DVDs and waiting several days, you can immediately download them for rental. It would be better if Microsoft would allow you to download information to a disc for a hard file, but you cannot ask for everything.
In deciding in my purchase of a new generation video game console, the Microsoft Xbox360 just went up a few notches in my vote.
if you can purchase tv shows why can't u purchase movies???
This seems like the poorer rich man's solution for HD. I'm not interested in the television for purchase only because of the hard drive issue (torrents and itunes works fine there anyhow).
However, the movie rental thing is exactly what I want. I can live with renting something the day before, letting it download, watch it, delete it, repeat. As long as its in 720p, I'm cool. Will be YEARS before I have a 1080p TV so I care exactly zero about that. In years HD-DVD players will be 70 bucks, the discs 15, and between then and now I'll be happy with HD download of rentals.
To me, whatever hard drive solution they come to won't be cheap enough or large enough. If they integrate with Vista to transfer, I'll just hope someone hacks around that to work with my mac (Vista isn't worth the money to install on my MacPro so working with XP eventually would be optimal). The only thing I hope for is that the third party transfer option (Datel XSATA) will work to transfer to a PC. If this is true then a larger hard drive would be nice to give it some play room since as of now it would be only one HD movie at a time.
just some of the questions i've seen.
"(~$3) for TV shows just seems expensive, especially if its only a rental."
the tv shows are all purchases plus that is for hi def. The movies are the only rentals.
"So if I rent a movie for x points, and if I don't watch it within 24 hours, I have to rent it again for x points? The only difference is that it's now on the HDD? After 14 days, I need to re-download it?" you have 24 hours from when you START viewing it to finish viewing it. If you don't start it for 5 or 6 days it will keep.
Great. So there are like 20 movie titles there, most of which suck complete ass, a couple of random TV shows, and then this:
50 fights from Ultimate Fighting Championship, and some episodes from The Ultimate Fighter
Way to fill out the "1,000 hours", Microsoft.
The devil's in the details, yeah. And in this case, the "details" are the complete lack of content.
The reason why Netflix hasn't even gotten into the download market yet (they've been planning it for *years*) and the reason why Amazon's and Apple's download services suck so bad right now is the copyright issue. And MS is obviously having just as much trouble securing content as everybody else. The difference is, while Netflix has promised they're going to hold off on downloading until they can do it right, MS has apparently decided to plow ahead with 50 fights from Ultimate Fighting Championship. Whoopee! Where do I sign up??
I said this the other day and I'll say it again - don't expect it to get better, either. Star Wars isn't going to magically be made available for downloading tomorrow and neither are any of the other 65,000 titles that are in active circulation on Netflix right now. This is really a non-feature, just as it was when Amazon launched Unbox and Apple launched the iTunes Movie Store. Nobody cares.
As for it being the "first HD download service", again, it really doesn't much matter without content. Not that I'd call 6.8mbps 720p VC-1 videos "HD" to begin with - they are neither technically HD (that codec does not conform to ATSC standards) nor would I say that any resolution at 6.8mbps could ever be called HD in practical terms either. There's just not enough data there to get decent HD quality.
In other words... NEXT!
I have to agree with Jeff, above. It seemed unreasonable when the first story on this appeared last week, and it still seems unreasonable now. The trifecta of download times, available HD storage capacity and their initial offering leaves me really cold. I can't imagine what will carry this service. In the end, I don't expect it will add much of a boost for either Xbox sales or MS's bottom line.
Someone mentioned that this is a sign of the "new" microsoft, but actually, it seems like a classic chapter from MS's past. Look at what the competition is doing, announce something that is 20% better and 10% cheaper, and then let them wait until it's either (a) available or (b) can actually be used in a reasonable fashion. In the past, that's been enough to get people to wait for MS's software solution, it seems like they're hoping it will work in this new arena as well.
Jeff, you better get your facts straight before spouting off.
You think 6.8Mbps VC-1 video will be technically not HD, and would barely be decent HD? Do you know that "Batman Begins" on HD-DVD was encoded at a rough average bit rate of around 11 Mbps, at 1080p video using the VC-1 codec? It is widely regarded as one of "the best" HD movie encodes yet - be it Blu-Ray, HD-DVD, broadcast HD, D-VHS - whatever the medium. The VC-1 codec has undergone further refinements since then, resulting in even lower bitrates.
The announced Live Video downloads are 720p at roughly 7Mbps. No biggie, since 720p is less than half the pixels of 1080p. I bet you, you will be amazed at how good this video is going to look than your average ABC and Fox HD programming - which are routinely transmitted at less than 15Mbps using the freaking MPEG-2 codec. VC-1 is about three times as efficient as MPEG-2, so in effect, you are going to be seeing just as good, if not a better picture from these VC-1 encodes than you will on even broadcast HD.
And you are complaining about the available titles for download? This is the launch of the service, and it takes time to create new VC-1 encoded versions of these movies and shows. Do you think these shows and movies were natively produced in VC-1 by the studios? Also, the studios and networks might just be wanting to gauge the level of interest before they bring out the big gun, mega franchises to Live Video service. It's all a matter of time.
yawn..
my cable provider already lets me rent HD movies on demand for 24hr and i can already watch it as many times as i want for 24hrs.. i can do this today... if they let me purchase movies then that would actually be different.. and iTV is not HD but you CAN actually purchase the movies.. it's not quite the same thing as this...
Ryan, make sure to give us a full video walkthrough of the service running each of the launch titles unabridged. ;)
I don't have hi-def on demand through my cable provider so this will be a fantastic option for me. The prices for purchase and rental are right on the money and as an avid MMA fan, those fights from the UFC should be great. Not to mention Adult Swim content!
can anybody clear up... for the movie rental if you download a movie but do not start watching it for like 3 days, can you just start watching on the 3rd day and have it for the next 24 hrs. Because i remember reading somewhere that its 24 hours from when you start VIEWING the video, but i cant remember where. anybody know?
farzad shafiezadeh from iran
You know what, I give Microsoft credit with trying. Only problem is that it seems to be rushed. Everyone has already pointed out so many problems with the service, it makes you wonder if maybe microsoft feels threatened by Sony.
The movie selection is very weak for a launch. I mean come on, Batman Forever?! Not to mention the limited space on the hard drive. With everything else that you want to store on there, now you have to worry about 5 gig movies and 2+ gig tv shows? The other thing that bothers me is that if they are doing this, is there any point to getting the HDDVD drive? If you have one, you realy don't have a need for the other.
Lets hope that there is more than meets the eye with this new feature. Maybe some integration into the Live Anywhere system where even my windows mobile can get access to those tv shows would be cool. How bout more hard drive space?
sweeet... they have slow downloads on 3GB files? niiiice.. watch out Apple
Very surprising and amazing. I hope they also have 1080i downloads because I got my HDTV about 4 or 5 yrs ago and it does not support 720p. I also wish the 360 had come with a bigger HD. We only got about 12GB, whats that going to hold?
720p is not HD quality. I think this article is misleading.
480 i/p - SD "Standard Definition"
720 i/p - ED "Enhanced Definition"
1080 i/p - HD "High Definition"
As such the article should be titled:
"Microsoft's Xbox Live Video: EDTV and ED movie downloads for your 360"
720 is indeed hi-def.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-definition_video
"High-definition television (HDTV) resolution is 1080 or 720 lines."
FYI..
480i is SD.
480p is ED.
720p and 1080i/p are HD.
Judging from the various articles I found floating around on this subject, it seems this service will be offered in the US only. Does anyone have any details pertaining to availability in other regions/markets, particularly Canada?
ib.
It's true that Amazon's and Apple's online movie content is lacking, but CinemaNow.com and MovieLink.com have a pretty good library. As for this Xbox Live Video thing, what your trashing is merely the launch content. The content will grow.
720p not HD? Who told you that? The salesman trying to sell you a 1080p set?
I don't understand why there is so much hype about this. A limited movie selection, uber long download times, only 24 hours to watch said movie, can't transfer it to another device, and no external storage. Much rather see Apple's iTunes library grow so I can actually own the movies I'm droping cash for.
First I felt like telling you guys how exciting news this is. Then I realised it's a natural step and MS would be fools not to take it.
While I would never buy a movie or episode from a series as a download (can't be sold, can't be borrowed, can't be view on another tv in the same household etc) renting is a completely different beast. We rent because we don't plan to keep the movie, and being able to download the movie saves us time.
The current lineup is a bit weak, but I'm sure it will expand with time. We have to remember that MS have sold 6-7 million units thus far, expect another 2-3 million during Christmas. This makes 360 the most sold (computers excluded) consumer electronics device capable of downloading and playing HD-content. Movie studios should see the market potential this brings.
Only 720p-content is not a problem. A large number of LCD/plasma tv-sets is sold on a daily basis, but most of these (95%+) only have a resolution of 1366*768 _or_less_. Yes, this will change with time. But it will change slowly, and don't expect tv's with native 1080-resolution to be the majority sold for at least 2 years.
As a final note, a larger harddrive will be needed. Thankfully it's a simple things for MS to release and I'm sure it's coming.
Heres my two cents......Alot of people dont own or cant afford an hdtv in the first place so alot of people dont care about this downloading movies and shows crap i say pump out more games bigger hard drives and lower the memory unit for people that cant afford a hard drive to like 20 bux at least geez i can tell that microsoft and other companies dont give a crap about the poor. The rich keep getting richer and the poor keeps gettin poorer and the rest fall in-between i say lower prices a tad bit they would make more sales.Im sure you guessed i do not own an hdtv but i will be buying an xbox 360 this weekend after a rip off my arm and leg for it.Lower prices,start caring for the people that would really appreciate having a 360.Thanks for reading my post.
Sincerely,
The armless man
saycheese you are correct sir bout VC-1. been reading up on it. VC-1 will/is becoming the standard codec for HD-DVD/Blu-Ray. no matter who wins the format race MS wins the war.
I'm happy to see UFC on there. They are growing so fast, it's only a good thing for the sport :) ( OH, this isn't a MMA blog, no one else cares ;) )
Yadda, yadda, yawn. Download movie. Watch movie. Download show. Watch show. Oh my _Gawd_, what an unparalleled genius move! Has nobody noticed the infantile mass of content? What happened to documentaries/education/politics/decent cerebral flics. Nah, give em CSI and a bunch of crud. Seriously, if all of ye can get this excited about the downloading of moronic proprietary content onto (pretty decent) proprietary hardware ye all deserve to be MS fanboys. G E T A L I F E.
I love everything about it, but the download times are the critical point that's not really being addressed. That's the problem with only having 24hrs. What if I rent it on friday afternoon, get involved in a project on sat and can't watch until Sun night???? That's an 8 dollar rental, not 4 dollars.
Now SD content.... This really has potential. The HD stuff will be hamstringed until we get faster speeds to the house.
Tivo should offer free sd downloads of the original broadcast with commercials and all. Since they're now competing, That's about the only way I see for Tivo to make gains against this. If they don't start improving the product, this could put them over the edge of the cliff.
Bored.....make a decent game MS, stop trying to spread your wings and fly when you haven't even given the 360 a game worth spend countless hours playing.
Nice. I'll take the option! Just add another bonus feature to the Xbox360 and a reason not to go Blu-ray or HD DVD.
Now, let's see the prices.
Looks like this is only for USA - we're out of luck in Canada
"Downloads are in VC-1 (aka WMVHD) at 720p, 6.8Mbps video with 5.1 surround"
Does this worry anyone? I don't know enough about WMV to say, but 720p content in MPEG-2 at less than 12-14Mbps are pretty crappy looking. I would imagine that unless VC1 is light-years better at dealing with motion artifacts and macroblocking, that these downloads would look pretty bad.
The 720p resolution is fine. The bit rate is reasonable, probably quite good looking. As others point out most HD displays aren't 1080i anyway, and you will probably barely tolerate how long an HD download will take as it is. If you look around you'll see conventional wisdom is VC-1 is almost as good as h.264 at encoding video (Microsoft would argue its virtually the same, but cheaper to license and a little simpler to implement). And h.264 is generally regarded as 2:1 better at encoding video than MPEG-2: the same quality at half the bit rate. A good cable MPEG-2 HD signal is 14.4 or 15Mbps (CBR), so a 7Mbps (probably VBR) VC-1 movie is probably about the same. Should be quite good looking, though you'll certainly see some artifacts as you will with any such encoding system. As others have pointed out, VC-1 IS one of the codecs used in HD-DVD and BluRay, so you really can't argue that it isn't HD because of that.
The initial selection is poor, but you can't judge it on that. Apple had a quite limited selection of TV shows at first and it now has rather a lot. They currently have a limited selection of movies, but the assumption/hope is that this will eventually evolve. If it doesn't all of these things are a waste of time. But you can't judge it on the initial selection. Of course you also don't have to buy it until the selection improves.
Everything will depend on the details--what movies, how long to download, how easy to use, how buggy, etc etc. We'll see. But its an encouraging development never the less.
This is a good effort, but Microsoft needs to change some things:
1.) TV shows should not be purchase only. HUGE, HUGE, HUGE mistake there. With a model like this, at this stage, TV shows should be rental only, just like the movies because most everybody will just want to rent. If people want to buy TV shows, they're going to purchase shows on DVD. Not download them and then move them to a puny proprietary HDD.
Microsoft, by making TV shows "purchase only", you've doomed this portion of your service to failure. As sure as the sun rises, this part of it will fail. Make TV shows rentable or next to no one will bother paying for and downloading shows.
2.) Microsoft, I hope you're aware you're going to need to beef up the HDD capacity of the Xbox 360, big time. And I mean, BIG TIME. If we're going to be downloading HD content (not just SD content), then we're going to need to see 200 and 300 GB HDD's on the Xbox. 20 GB is a joke. We're going to need ten or fifteen times that capacity. Good effort, Microsoft, with this launch, but you're going to need to wake up fast on this one.
3.) Movie rentals are only good for 24 hours? Is this a joke? Microsoft, this will kill much of the business you could get, right there. Although I may not watch something I downloaded in the first 24 hours, I'm certainly not going to pay for it a second time merely one day after I first paid for it, for the priviledge of watching it again or to watch it for the first time to make up for not having gotten around to watching it within the first 24 hours. Forget that.
I want downloadable SD and HD movies, but I want a rental model like what Netflix offers. Let me pay a flat fee for unlimited downloads, month to month, but put a cap on how many movies I can have on my HDD at one time (based on the flat fee I'm paying each month), and let me keep them as long as I want and watch them as often and as many times as I want; and then when I'm ready to download more, the system can give me the choice of which of the movies will be deleted to make room for the new downloads. That's the way to do it, Microsoft. That's what will make most of us happy. This is what we're used to with Netflix and Blockbuster... now we just want it in downloadable form instead of messing with discs. Get it???
Oh yeah, and be sure to include the TV shows in this rental/downloadable model, kay?
4.) Microsoft, you're going to have to make it so this content can be downloaded directly through the Xbox Live web interface and directly to the HDD of my WiFi-enabled/ethernetted Xbox. I don't want to mess with my computer everytime I want to download a movie or TV show and then send it to my Xbox HDD. That's too much work. Besides, I don't want to make a habit of having to leave my computer on all night online and unattended, while a bunch of downloads take place in order to enjoy this service. That would be lame and wouldn't give me peace of mind (or a good night's sleep) in terms of security. And trust me, NO one gets to mess with my sleep... you try to do that or put me in a position of having to do that in order to download something, and you can forget any fantasies you have of getting my hard-earned dollars!
Now, leaving my Xbox on during the night to receive downloads is altogether different and not a problem; I don't have security issues with that because I don't (and can't, for that matter) keep all my personal files and data on my Xbox.
5.) Microsoft, you're going to have to seriously beef up your library of choices here. I mean, we're talking monster libraries. I want to see movie and TV libraries that seriously rival what Netflix offers (and they're up to over 65,000 titles and growing). I want to see a LOT of TV choices - and if you're going to offer shows, I want to have access to every episode of every season that is available of the shows you offer. If you botch this up, people will not download shows. And as a reminder, re-read #1 above.
And while you're at it, why not offer music on demand as well?
I'd love to be able to call up any movie I want (and in HD if available), any TV show I want (and in HD if available), and any song I want - all from enormous libraries for each, and download it to my 300 GB HDD on my Xbox, all directly through the Xbox Live web interface. All rentable. With no time limit on how long I can store the downloads or how often or how many times I enjoy them, that is, until I'm ready to download new media in their respective places. And all for a monthly flat fee.
Granted, this will take some time to do, but if you do that, we're yours.
Microsoft... are you listening?
I Agree, Microsoft if you want to win the war, you need to let us hook up our external USB hard drives to store movies/games on.
Now Apple, you have no excuses.
But we need more TV Series, and good prices, please. That 1.99$ from Apple is overpriced!
Or make them ad-based for free, that would be cool.
Anyway, excellent move.
Anyone have any idea whether this is a US only announcement? I hope they show the UK some love :-S
As soon as someone figures out how to keep the content I paid for, on ALL my pc's I'm buying an xbox 360, till then I'm gonna play with my Wii (ner). I'm done rebuying crap. If I pay for a copy of a movie or song or any digital media, It better work on everything I want to view it on. I'm not buying a copy for each device. In the mean time back to p2p sharing and bittorrent.......
There is a much higher hard drive. Xbox 360 elite comes with a 120GB hard drive (I have one) and you can buy those hard drives at retails for $149.99, lucky for me, I'll have no problems downloading movies, etc. XP