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Xbox 360 offering HD movie downloads soon

The New York Times carries official word that November 22 is the day Microsoft will launch a HD movie download store for the xbox 360. I've heard rumors about this for the last month or so but I thought that the HD-DVD pack for the xbox 360 would derail any downloadable movie store. It's pretty impressive to hear they'll be offering them in high definition, as that's likely to push download times into the several hours instead of the 10-20 min it takes to get a low-res show from the iTunes store. The downside is that movie DRM will require that you watch the movie within 24 hours, but TV shows should last longer.

I'm surprised to see Microsoft beat Apple, Netflix, TiVo, Sony, and Amazon to the TV-integrated movie store. It'll be interesting to see how well it works out for Microsoft.

update: Engadget has screenshots of the Movie service in action.

by Matt Haughey November 6, 2006 in News

Comments

Even using VC-1, which I'm sure they will, full HD chews space like crazy, and the largest XBox drive is only 20GB. Either they're going to have to crank up the compression a hell of a lot (thereby dropping quality), or they need to sell a larger drive.

Posted by: MegaZone at Nov 6, 2006 8:44:39 PM

I was just reading about this online and also posted it on my blog at www.aryeltech.com/gamers.

I can imagine that Blockbuster and movie rental stores are taking a huge hit these days.... Another way Microsoft is trying to capture more of a share in a market you never would have thought they would be in!

Posted by: monchster at Nov 7, 2006 10:13:36 AM

MegaZone, they showed an example at the release and ATL was 4.7GB at 720p which maths out to just over 6Mbit. That's about what the Apple H.264 720p trailers are pushing, which look pretty good to my eyes. Also, the demo 360 being used was caught using a 80GB HD, so it looks like they are indeed planning to release something bigger.

I'm not sure there will be a lot of success, because once again the content companies are going to force them not to undercut the DVD sales on price, even though this is a rental service and not a purchase per se. The HD resolution does add an extra perk, but I don't see that making this a good enough value to drop Netflix.

Posted by: Grover at Nov 7, 2006 10:15:30 AM

I don't know about others but I have a pretty up to date system and my download has been in process for several hours now. I started the download late last night and it is still uncompleted. What's up with that?

Posted by: Sedric at Nov 24, 2006 10:02:42 AM

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