arstechnica.com— A little more than a month after its launch, the Xbox 360's new video download service is performing surprisingly well. What is separating it from the crowd?
Dec 22, 2006View in Crawl 4
To quote the article - "Though exact sales figures aren't available from any Web site or studio, insiders agree that it's the most, and maybe only, positive story in digital movie downloads this year."Obviously poorly researched. While the story may be positive for XBox adopters (i'm one of them), the big enws this month was iTunes and it's digital downloads being one of the top ten storefronts for music - counting the brick and mortar stores. It beat out Tower and Borders and Sam Goody. That's incredibly good news for the digital realm. I'm not typing this to knock the 360's service - I'm happy with it on my 360. But Apple has over a 70% share in the digital realm - this article simply means Microsoft is beating everyone but apple and the brick and mortars. Apple, however, is beating brick and mortars too.<a class="user" href="http://news.com.com/iTunes+outsells+traditional+music+stores/2100-1027_3-5965314.html">http://news.com.com/iTunes+outsells+traditional+music+stores/2100-1027_3-5965314.html</a>
Redownloading takes too long with media this size. Just give me a way to back it up locally, even if I have to move it back to the Xbox 360 to play it (or just stream it through the 360).
@HappyScrappy The TV shows start playing BEFORE they are finished downloading. I just buy the TV shows I want then delete them. When I wanted to watch them again I re-download them and can start watching within a few minutes.
Awesome. So If I have nothing else to download, and I don't care much about fast forwarding, I can watch it again as I redownload it!How about they just give me a way to back it up instead? Save us both some bandwidth.If I just wanted to redownload it every time, I could watch shows off of abc.com or nbc.com for free.
Actually, the movies don't get deleted on your hard drive after they expire. They remain on there, and if you go back to the marketplace and purchase them again it will unlock for additional viewing without having to redownload.I found out about this after my brother hit Play on "Unforgiven" to see what the quality was like, and locked me out when I wanted to watch the movie the next day.
I'm just saying this was my experience. Yes, it was during rollout, and the quality of the movie was awesome, and it was worth the wait of downloading it (although I wish I had a larger hard drive to put it on). I also didn't know that I could watch while downloading.
nreynoldsDec 23, 2006
Ya, because we all know how fast you can download 25GB, right? Only a few seconds, right?
dfensDec 23, 2006
To quote the article - "Though exact sales figures aren't available from any Web site or studio, insiders agree that it's the most, and maybe only, positive story in digital movie downloads this year."Obviously poorly researched. While the story may be positive for XBox adopters (i'm one of them), the big enws this month was iTunes and it's digital downloads being one of the top ten storefronts for music - counting the brick and mortar stores. It beat out Tower and Borders and Sam Goody. That's incredibly good news for the digital realm. I'm not typing this to knock the 360's service - I'm happy with it on my 360. But Apple has over a 70% share in the digital realm - this article simply means Microsoft is beating everyone but apple and the brick and mortars. Apple, however, is beating brick and mortars too.<a class="user" href="http://news.com.com/iTunes+outsells+traditional+music+stores/2100-1027_3-5965314.html">http://news.com.com/iTunes+outsells+traditional+music+stores/2100-1027_3-5965314.html</a>
happyscrappyDec 23, 2006
Redownloading takes too long with media this size. Just give me a way to back it up locally, even if I have to move it back to the Xbox 360 to play it (or just stream it through the 360).
lynnDec 23, 2006
@HappyScrappy The TV shows start playing BEFORE they are finished downloading. I just buy the TV shows I want then delete them. When I wanted to watch them again I re-download them and can start watching within a few minutes.
happyscrappyDec 24, 2006
Awesome. So If I have nothing else to download, and I don't care much about fast forwarding, I can watch it again as I redownload it!How about they just give me a way to back it up instead? Save us both some bandwidth.If I just wanted to redownload it every time, I could watch shows off of abc.com or nbc.com for free.
glitch82Dec 24, 2006
Actually, the movies don't get deleted on your hard drive after they expire. They remain on there, and if you go back to the marketplace and purchase them again it will unlock for additional viewing without having to redownload.I found out about this after my brother hit Play on "Unforgiven" to see what the quality was like, and locked me out when I wanted to watch the movie the next day.
loungeactxDec 27, 2006
I'm just saying this was my experience. Yes, it was during rollout, and the quality of the movie was awesome, and it was worth the wait of downloading it (although I wish I had a larger hard drive to put it on). I also didn't know that I could watch while downloading.