Surprise, surprise, it's November 22nd (happy birthday
Xbox 360!), and Microsoft has taken its new
Xbox Live Video Marketplace live. The biggest mystery at this point was price, which turns out to be $2 for SD TV shows, $3 for HD, while movie rentals will run you $3 for SD and $6 for HD. This is all converted from the various, confusing MS Points involved in each purchase (80 Points = $1), which we're sure we'll all be well sick of after a couple months of using the Marketplace -- if not already. The current word on selection is 48 movies and 50 TV shows available for download, and we're sure that'll be growing -- though
V for Vendetta is already available as a HD rental... what more could you want?
[Thanks, TexRob]
UPDATE: Joystiq has some
more info and pics galore of the service. They clarified the pricing scheme as well: movies are divided into "New" and "Classic" releases, and priced at $6/$4 for the former, $4.50/$3 for the latter.
posted Nov 22nd 2006 at 12:32PM
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Big Sam @ Nov 22nd 2006 3:24PM
6 bucks for an new HD movie rental? Looks like I'll be using my HD-DVD add-on + Netflix more than I'll be downloading. According to the interview on Major Nelson's podcast, they claim that the bandwidth costs are the reason for the higher price but I still think the HD version should not cost that much more than the SD.
And what's with no HD version of the Matrix?
I do like that some of the SD versions come in widescreen with 5.1 sound.
Xyzzy @ Nov 22nd 2006 3:52PM
If they had current Battlestar Gallactica, I'd bite. Otherwise, eh, probably not.
Scott K @ Nov 22nd 2006 4:04PM
I was excited about this at first. I don't even mind the pricing. But there is hardly anything there in HD. I didn't expect some of the tv shows that were never in HD to be in HD, but things like Conan O'Brien and Studio 60 don't have HD versions available.
I did expect every movie to be available in HD. Hardly any of them are and its really annoying. There are maybe 5-10 movies/tv shows that I would be downloading right now, but I couldn't find anything but a few free trailers because nothing else I wanted was in HD.
I've been a big Xbox 360 supporter, but this service is off to a very lame start.
chris @ Nov 22nd 2006 6:52PM
I would imagine that more HD content will be available when they provide us with the means to have larger Hard Disks. Until then we could only fit about two movies. If the average ignorance is bliss user tries to download their third movie and finds that they dont have the space available then that same user would spread the word and the reputation of the Video Marketplace would fall. It was probably done intentionally in the order of content first, then peripheral so all of the users would have a reason to buy a larger HDD. If a larger HDD would have been released six months ago, would you have bought one?
Brad @ Nov 23rd 2006 9:52AM
Lame is an understatement. Not to mention that after several attemps I still could not download the 720p version of V for Vendetta. After 15 hours of trying I only managed 5% of it.
Also, for fraks sake, where are the Battlestar Galactica episodes?
s2 @ Nov 23rd 2006 11:31AM
Anyone else notice the file sizes? You can download an almost 2 hour HD movie in roughly 5GB. Curiously, that could fit on a regular ol' DVD. Why do we need Blu-Ray and HD DVD again?
Microsoft said yesterday that so many people were hitting it at once, that everything slowed down, which they were working to address. This same problem occured when they packed on a bunch of videos from E3, and everyone attempted to download those at once. I'm sure it'll improve.
I also heard you can start watching the item after you've downloaded 10 minutes worth of content. Can anyone confirm?
Joe @ Nov 24th 2006 1:10PM
How's the PQ for the HD material?
kesnalawrence @ Nov 28th 2006 7:11AM
The picture quality on the HD shows is good. Excellent would be a stretch because everything looks white washed due to the lower bit rate.