Rumor: HD movie downloads on Xbox 360
by James Ransom-Wiley 
{ Nov 3rd 2006 at 4:25PM }
Upstart Wordpress blog Shsibae flung a big ol' rumor onto the web yesterday: Microsoft is poised to launch an HD movie download service using Xbox Live. Shsibae explained that movies would be available for rental ($4) or purchase (unspecified price). Rented movies would remain on the Xbox 360's hard drive for up to two weeks, but would allegedly auto-erase within a day or so of being started. The service was said to launch with 1000+ hours of video content.Returning to Shsibae's original post now, one finds the "news" conspicuously absent, with no update explaining the disappearance. So was Shsibae on to something? Did the long arm of Microsoft slap the words right off the page?
The obvious argument against the rumor being true is that Xbox 360's paltry 20 GB hard drive is not suited for a feature-length movie download service; though another rumor tells of a 100 GB model in the works (Microsoft did shoot this down). On the flipside, there is some evidence that supports the movie service rumor being true. We know that Microsoft has a keen eye towards the digital distribution era (Gates iterates this sentiment clearly in this Engadget interview); and rumors of future Xbox updates enabling Direct TV and IPTV also lend credence to the push for media over broadband.
Is a larger strike to follow the HD-DVD and 1080p-support counter-attacks? Could an Xbox Live movie distribution service land a critical blow to Sony's market dominance? Whatever the case, it ain't just about games no more.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Chris @ Nov 3rd 2006 4:34PM
when the 360 launched they said in 1 year exactly they would announce a new awesome feature to the 360 and many speculated this was it. Well it's a year later.
Though the original rumor said the movies were streaming (in order to get around the HDD size).
But if they release a new Hard Drive thats 100GB and call it a Media Drive or something like that, I'd rather have that instead of HD-DVD, if the 100GB drive can hold downloaded movies.
LordMinogue @ Nov 3rd 2006 4:37PM
The pain involved in downloading a 10 gig movie makes it totally not worth it.
I buy DVDs for $3 each in bargin bins, and I usually find some pretty good titles too.
ultran @ Nov 3rd 2006 4:38PM
How about an HDMI Cable first eh? And then make it where it upscales regular dvd movies to 1080i.
I guess that's not going to make them any money though...so I guess I shouldn't hold my breath.
SickNic @ Nov 3rd 2006 4:45PM
Would the 20GB hard drive even matter if this was in fact a service primarily used on your computer? Download the movies on your computer, and stream them to the Xbox360? Why would you need a bigger hard drive for that?
rjg @ Nov 3rd 2006 4:55PM
"The pain involved in downloading a 10 gig movie makes it totally not worth it."
I disagree. Right now I pay netflicks for movies that take about 2 biz days to reach me, which is something I don't have any issue with. Sure it's not that same as going to blackbuster and renting (which sucked anyway). So for the convienence of it being mailed to me, I'm willing to just adjust my renting style; aka, I just plan ahead and my movies arrive a day or so before I plan to watch them.
A download service would be even better than what netflix's doing. For starters it's HD, which rocks. Also, if I do a little planning ahead, just like I'm already doing with netflix, this will work as well or better. And this is assuming they are going to download the whole movie to my hd, which they most likely won't do.
Either way, it rocks, bring it on. I have a 10mbit connection anyway, so no matter how they roll it, I'm ready.
This would be a pretty big kick in the nuts of both Apple and Sony.
BlueLotus @ Nov 3rd 2006 5:00PM
I noticed now when i download a movie is says "Does Not Expire." isnt that kind of a hint towards this rumor being true? After all, you cant have movies that do not expire and then not have movies that do expire.
Is it possible for the 360 to do like what digital cable does and "stream" the video to your 360?
Kuu2 @ Nov 3rd 2006 5:01PM
Bubye Blu-Ray and HD-DVD.
It is only a matter of time before we start downloading movies instead of purchasing hard copies. This is why Blu-Ray and HD-DVD are absolutely useless when it comes to deliverinig movies. Music is already taken hold or using this delivery system, it was only a matter of time that movies would too.
cello @ Nov 3rd 2006 5:06PM
I would think that this would be heavily compressed, hopefully leveraging the 360s power to help de-compress the footage - since there's likely no way to use to content on other devices.
I imagine they could get it down to 500 megs per hour of HD content.
Spore @ Nov 3rd 2006 5:09PM
It'd probably be worse compression than if you had the VC-1 version of a movie (like on HD-DVD or Blu-Ray).
Why can't we attach USB hard drives to this sucker? They'd be plenty fast for storing media!
LordMinogue @ Nov 3rd 2006 5:13PM
@#2
"10 gig movies"?
What kind of epic sh*t are you downloading???? lol
10 gigs is conservative for the size of a HD movie; remember that blue ray and HD DVD are 25 and 15 gig formats respectively.
Remember the title of the article: "HD Movie Downloads"
My measured connection speed is about 1MB, so downloading one of those would take the greater part of 4 days, assuming the connection isn't broken.
Tyler @ Nov 3rd 2006 5:17PM
Without getting into this much, I do think that Microsoft is still holding some aces in its sleeves that will really surprise everyone over the next couple months. Rumors include: this one of course, bigger hard drives, some sort of DirecTV blade, music download service, Divx/Xvid streaming, etc. Hopefully, some of these rumore come to be true. If that's the case, it's good to be a 360 owner!
vaylen @ Nov 3rd 2006 5:24PM
Who the hell wants to wait days and days to download the 10-30 gigs of data needed for a movie in 1080? Most of us don't have optic fiber running to our friggin' houses. Just give it to me on one disc, thank you very much.
Dextro @ Nov 3rd 2006 5:26PM
Why can't they just remember the damn games!?!? Why!?!?! It's not like I care for movie downloads and alike...
It's not like I care that the new console supports 146 kinds of multimedia formats I won't ever use...
It's not like I care that it has the amazing ability to have a webcam (that I already have on my PC)...
It's not like I care that I can browse the web after fifteen minutes of typing in the address (when I could have done it in 2 in my PC right in the next room)...
Why can't we just focus on the the games!?!? I want a console to play games! Just sit down, pop in the disc/cartrige/whatever and give me a good time playing GAMES! Fun games! I agree it's cool to have those sleek new graphics but is the game any fun or do I spend more time listening to music while improving my "sk1lz"?
Witbyt @ Nov 3rd 2006 5:30PM
Chris - Technically a year later would be Nov. 22, its only Nov.3
stranger @ Nov 3rd 2006 5:34PM
Any chance that while xbox live could be providing the download service infrastructure, the movies and whatnot could be downloaded to your PC's hard drive instead of your 360? Now that the fall update allows your 360 to stream video playback from your computer, it doesn't seem all that far fetched.
If there was any truth to this rumor, that is...
lothar @ Nov 3rd 2006 5:49PM
Its a neat idea in practice but I'll agree with the comments about the wait to download a movie not something I want to do. If they can tie it into my DirecTV to provide some kind of uber on demand system then more power to them.
Where I can see this working is with music videos, the typical music video is 5 minutes, even in HD that would be a reasonable download.
Robotic House Plant @ Nov 3rd 2006 6:28PM
20GB is enough to a feature length movie. Didn't the orignal TIVOs ship with a 20-30GB hard drive, enough to store 30+ hours of compressed content? Same there here really.
And they don't necessary have to send the content in HD. They could simply send it in lower quality and upscale it on the fly with the hardware. But that's just speculation on my part.
Andrew @ Nov 3rd 2006 6:31PM
#11. Usenet and the BitTorrent sites are crawling with 4.35GB H.264 encoded HD movies. I'm sure downloadable versions of movies for the 360 can be made with compareable sizes.
Psaakyrn @ Nov 3rd 2006 7:11PM
The simplest way, is to provide an addon with the intended service, like the HD-DVD addon (and said addon coincidently having 100 GB memory).
otakucode @ Nov 3rd 2006 8:01PM
Andrew: Then customers expecting real HD content are going to be getting ripped off. A real HD movie, even using H.264, must be bigger to have any hope of retaining decent quality. Most of the 4.35GB H264 movies you see are NOT in HD resolution. They are taken from HD sources and compressed down to fit on a single DVDR disc, sacrificing resolution and image fidelity in the process. Most also contain AC3 audio which takes up signficant space.
10GB is just not big enough for a movie in 1280x720 resolution with surround sound. Yes, it can be done. Just like you can get 8 hours of video on a DVD. It's going to look like crap, and sound like crap, but it can be squeezed in there. And if you think consumers won't mind, I'd recommend trying to unearth reviews of the original DVD releases of the X Files TV series which just packed too much content on each disc and made for horrible quality.
I dream of HD movies, but the 360 doesn't have enough space for them. Heck, my 1TB fileserver doesn't have enough space for an appreciable number of them. And my 9mbit connection is most certainly not fast enough to stream them.
vorpal @ Dec 6th 2006 6:22PM
Ummm. Is it just me or is the 360 just too friggin loud to use as a movie player.
Moogle @ Nov 3rd 2006 9:09PM
Yeah, I can't wait to hear the whining as everyones downloads are cut off at 90%. The ISPs will cite breach of contract. A recent one that came up - unlimited usage, but not for certain types of data. The types of data are not stipulated and basically consist of anything you large you might hit their artificial cap at.
ISPs have been pretty lax about using all that government subsidizing to actually build infrastructure - as soon as 5 million people all simultaneously download their first HD movie, the tubes will be full and senators won't get their vital internets.
I'm putting my money on 'no'.
Sam I Am @ Nov 3rd 2006 11:33PM
Experience high-definition video on your computer with Windows Media High Definition Video (WMV HD).
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/musicandvideo/hdvideo/hdvideo.aspx
nick @ Nov 3rd 2006 11:47PM
lol why wouldnt people just buy a ps3 instead. After you buy all the accessories you need for the xbox 360 to make it any where close to as good as the ps3 would make the 360 more expensive than the ps3. Am i right??
P_40E @ Nov 4th 2006 12:09AM
The Video section on the Media dashboard blade now has categories for full-length movies and TV shows. So they will be coming, eventually.
computer gamer @ Nov 4th 2006 2:37AM
This would be NO good. I already get jerky playback from 720p vids (small promo vids) while streaming from the xbox Hard Drive. A full movie wouldn't be smooth at all.
Sure A defrag may help there but it's not common knowledge AND you loose some data afaik.
HD movie playback for me will always be in a seperate machine or on my better Hard Drive'd laptop and pref via HDMI.
Andrew @ Nov 4th 2006 7:51PM
otakucode, you've obviously have never seen one of those rips. They ARE full 1280x720p HD resolution, and they DO have AC3 surround audio tracks.