eHomeUpgrade on FacebookeHomeUpgrade on FriendFeedeHomeUpgrade on TwittereHomeUpgrade on YouTubeSubscribe via E-mailSubscribe via RSS

Xbox 360 Leap Frogs Apple iTV and Sony PS3 in HD Content Delivery Race

By Alexander Grundner | November 7th, 2006 Interest Level: SMOKING HOT


xbox live movie screenshotMy oh my…. It looks like Microsoft has drawn first-blood with their new Xbox Live Movies & TV offering with 480p/720p (possibly 1080p as well) HD video marketplace. Too bad it’s not Halloween, or else I would say Apple and Sony should be afraid, very afraid. Ok. Enough of the dramatics. I just watched Microsoft’s press event, that Gizmodo kindly recorded, and there were some very interesting features announced with the service that didn’t make it into the official news release.

[VIDEO]

Feature Highlights:

  • Direct downloads to the Xbox 360 – requires purchase of a console hard drive
  • Option to rent videos – 14 days to view them, once played you have 24 hours to complete the viewing
  • Purchase Movies/TV shows to own – when you order the HD version, you also get the standard-definition version and you own the content for life. If you delete purchased shows from your hard drive you can re-download them from your Xbox Live “Locker” at any time
  • All purchases are made through your Xbox Live membership account – in other words you don’t have to worry about dealing with third party sites to purchase or retrieve content

Of course there’s probably more features on the way, I just hope that Microsoft is able to tie-in Xbox Live with Vista so users can view purchased content through their PCs as well. Ideally, Xbox Live should be a universal service that all Windows enabled devices should be able to tap into from one account. Got to love the media locker concept! It’s about time Microsoft started listening to their customers on how they want to purchase and consume premium digital content. I wouldn’t be surprised to see Zune worked into the mix somehow.

Comments | Post via Twitter / Facebook ID or Register

Short URL: http://bit.ly/cSyo7r [+]  Filed in: Content Providers  
____________
Alexander Grundner is the Editor & Publisher of eHomeUpgrade. He has been following "Digital Home" developments since 2003. He's also a fan of cross-platform, open development software and industry standards related to media, networking, and the web. You can catch his daily tech musings on Twitter: @agrundner.
[Subscribe via RSS 2.0 | Follow us on Twitter]
  • HOO FREAKING RAY! yes I am one of the Apple fan boy trolls of this site but I am thrilled to see MS doing this. Two reasons...




    1) It will force Apple to offer hi def content at a reasonable price. Compitition is good, and I can think of no two competitors to better suited to make this very interesting for the consumers.





    2) I already own a 360, so you know I will be checking this out when it drops. Andrew if you want me to write a review for you just drop me a note. :D
  • PoorGreg
    This all sounds great and I will surely try it if there's anything I'm interested in downloading when November 22nd comes around. A few message posters on engadget have been asking for HD versions of Battlestar Galactica, and I agree, those would be great. I guess the 640x480 versions from iTunes are the only ones I know of right now (but maybe AOL has them at 720x480).




    Please, I don't want to hear people complaining about how you can't get the movie you bought OUT of the xbox to play on different boxes. I don't want to hear about attempts to break the DRM that MS is obviously going to put on it, or races on who is going to be first to crack their DRM. I'm sure if you buy a movie it's not going to expire and magically disappear off the hard drive. I'm sure there'll be a way to download it again for free if your box gets stolen or you buy a bigger hard drive for the box in the future. If disk space is an issue, I think there are already tools to transfer stuff to/from the XBox hard drive to a PC.





    One thing I like is how the movie can start playing BEFORE it's finished downloading (borrowing from the Progressive Download technique popular in QuickTime I guess). Maybe later they can provide TRUE STREAMING audio/video of live events...





    Regarding content, maybe Microsoft and Amazon.com can partner. They are so close (geographically). If Amazon.com abandons their Unbox thing, maybe Microsoft can buy some of the Unbox content for XBox 360 users. Unbox has some good content but I'm not crazy about having to use their player, etc.
blog comments powered by Disqus