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.

This may sound a bit familiar to those paying close attention, but on November 22nd -- the year anniversary for the Xbox 360 -- Microsoft is announcing something fairly momentus, not for the gaming community, but for the CE industry. The Xbox 360, along with Akimbo, will be among the first mass-market devices able to download high def television programs -- and the first we know of in the states able to download HD movies. The service is called Xbox Live Video, and the fall update enables customers to spend their Microsoft points on standard and HD television from CBS, MTV, Comedy Central, VH1, Turner, and UFC, as well as HD movies from Warner Bros., Paramount, and so on. We're still a little in shock, ourselves, that Microsoft was able to in one fell swoop hit TiVo, Apple, Netflix, and a handful of others, but looking at Live over the last year, the move isn't that massively surprising. Of course, not even the vision of on-demand HD movies and TV downloads in six million homes at the flick of a switch could be without its variety of niggling concerns; being that we all know the devil's in the details, click on to get the particulars of the service.