In addition to announcing their video on demand offering as the "premier" movie download service for Windows Vista -- as well as rolling out a snazzy new interface for Vista with Media Center -- Vongo has announced that their services will be compatible with the Xbox 360. Of course, Microsoft has their own video on demand service on Xbox Live Marketplace, but Vongo provides a subscription-based ($10/month) service that may be palatable to some US-based gamers as well as a library of over 1,000 movies and 2,500 "video selections." More interesting is the fact that they've circumvented the difficulty of sharing DRMd content across the two platforms. In our chat with Bill Gates, he specifically mentioned that the Xbox 360 will enjoy a larger content base because of the secure nature of the hardware. Vongo's presser states, "The Xbox 360 will automatically check to see which Windows XP or Vista-based devices are registered on the network and ask the user whether they want to access content, such as their Vongo movies, from that PC." Consider this an opportunity to bypass the 360's anemic hard drive and Marketplace' non-subscription based pricing but still get video on demand movies on your big screen.
CES: Vongo video-on-demand takes demands from Xbox 360
by Christopher Grant 
on Jan 8th 2007 4:45PM
7
In addition to announcing their video on demand offering as the "premier" movie download service for Windows Vista -- as well as rolling out a snazzy new interface for Vista with Media Center -- Vongo has announced that their services will be compatible with the Xbox 360. Of course, Microsoft has their own video on demand service on Xbox Live Marketplace, but Vongo provides a subscription-based ($10/month) service that may be palatable to some US-based gamers as well as a library of over 1,000 movies and 2,500 "video selections." More interesting is the fact that they've circumvented the difficulty of sharing DRMd content across the two platforms. In our chat with Bill Gates, he specifically mentioned that the Xbox 360 will enjoy a larger content base because of the secure nature of the hardware. Vongo's presser states, "The Xbox 360 will automatically check to see which Windows XP or Vista-based devices are registered on the network and ask the user whether they want to access content, such as their Vongo movies, from that PC." Consider this an opportunity to bypass the 360's anemic hard drive and Marketplace' non-subscription based pricing but still get video on demand movies on your big screen.
Reader Comments (7)
Posted: Jan 8th 2007 9:10PM (Unverified) said
I thought MS would be doing/allowing something like this. $10 bucks a month is a great way to get your movie fix on.
Posted: Jan 8th 2007 9:36PM kurifurisan said
I tried Vongo a couple of months ago...it's basically Starz and Encore On Demand just so everyone knows. Kinda of nice, but if you already pay for it with cable, why pay twice to carry it on a laptop or on the 360?
Posted: Jan 9th 2007 9:54AM Beatdown said
I suppose Microsoft copied Sony's Idea on this as well
/sarcasm
/sarcasm
Posted: Jan 9th 2007 12:37AM (Unverified) said
MSFT is fighting battles on multiple fronts, and for the first time in a while, looks like it might actually win some of them. the console wars- they seem to have at the minimum pulled even with sony by realizing that hardware won't dictate superiority until programmers learn to write software for it. on the home media hub, they seem to be way ahead of everyone else and in the pure consumer space, traction and penetration are much more important than features and technology. for the first time in a long time, the giants, the evil twins of technology (Intel and MSFT) are actually on the verge of producing product offerings worthy of their $100+ billion market caps. Cisco and Apple, lets see what you got.
Posted: Jan 8th 2007 9:54PM (Unverified) said
I think it's important to point out that right now Vongo doesn't offer any HD content and HD content is never mentioned anywhere in the press release. When I tried the service none of the letterboxed content was anamorphic and looked hideous stretched to fill my 30in HD CRT screen.
But if you've got an SD TV I imagine it would be cool if you didn't already have cable.
But if you've got an SD TV I imagine it would be cool if you didn't already have cable.
Posted: Jan 8th 2007 10:48PM (Unverified) said
The fact that Vongo works on Windows media center is nothing new, since other movie stores such as MovieLink and CinemaNow already worked flawlessly on Windows Media Center.
Posted: Jan 9th 2007 10:37AM (Unverified) said
I agree with comment #3. HD content and lack of surround sound support is the only thing that keeps me from using Vongo. I've had my PC hooked up to my TV before and would be willing to do it again if Vongo supported HD and some form of surround sound. Personally I think it will be years before an HD video on demand source will be viable outside of cable and satellite providers. Not enough people are on a broadband connection and everyone throttles thier bandwidth.
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