HD movies over the Marketplace?
Strictly a rumour for now, but news has emerged from (relatively unknown to me) SHISBAE that rented movies could be going online in this very month. If it is true, expect to see more of your precious MS Points dwindle away!
Quoting from SHISBAE:
Rented videos will run about $4. A renter will supposedly have a couple weeks to start watching a rental, and then a day or so to finish a rental that they have already started. Presumably, rental downloads will self-erase, but we haven’t heard specifics. Likewise, we do not know the cost to buy a title, but we except Microsoft to keep their pricing in line with Apple’s selection through iTunes ($10-$15).
You can rent or buy the movies at very reasonable prices, if true. I would certainly buy into it, as it would be cheaper for me than buying a movie at £15 and only watching it once. It could turn out to be a very good investment for Microsoft, as I can see a lot of people thinking this is excellent. Let’s hope your internet speed is up for the task though, with DVDs weighing in at 5-9GB, there might be a slight wait. It doesn’t mention whether extras you get on a disc will be included in the download. Who knows, if they ask EA for advice, they might start charging you for the extras. Let’s hope that doesn’t happen.
Feature length movies will require a short caching period before viewing, which should be just long enough to make some popcorn, grab a beer, and find your favorite blanket.
The caching won’t be short on my connection, trust me! I really hope this is true, but please remember, until anything is confirmed, this is still a very plausible rumour. Especially after the Galactica series recap was put up on the Marketplace for people to enjoy. And we’ve seen the trailer for Pirates of the Carribean 2 on there. Maybe that was a test run to see if it is a popular idea? Once again, pure speculation at this point.
It’s interesting though, that with the HD-DVD drive add-on selling so well, that MS choose to do this. If you can get HD movies for such a small sum, why would there be a need for a disc player? Are MS shooting themselves in the foot a little bit? All will be revealed when this rumour spreads like wild fire running rampage in a forest, forcing Microsoft to say something.
Thanks Colby for finding this.
this is so much cooler than the hd-dvd drive. i would pay $4 every now and again to see something cool in hd, but i certainly wouldn’t shell out 2 bills for a drive (yet). this is a great idea, and i hope this happens.
- mu
Im sure that MS will launch the 100gb drive before starting to sell/rent movies. Ill probably buy the drive since its a lot less expensive than a stand alone player… Paying for air is not my thing, because at 5-9 gb a movie, the chances of eventually deleting them are really high.
wow…what about those people with XSATA though! will they be able to snatch the movies out I wonder. Also I thought HD stuff is at least 20gb, nobody would have the HDD space for it unless there were bigger hard drives.
I think it would be compressed pretty heavily. That would explain the caching period before viewing.
I have zero interest in an HD-DVD or BluRay player, but downloadable HD movies would be great (if they can somehow fit on the HDD).
Assuming they’re truly gonna offer this, I don’t think MS is shooting themselves at all. Their goal has always been to build a home entertainment hub and this would help push the 360 towards that goal.
The 360’s HD-DVD player isn’t so much money maker as it is an answer to the PS3. It’s a way to sell more 360s and keep current 360 owners confident.
It also steals a lot of thunder from the HD-DVD vs BluRay “war” when you can just download the content and skip the whole format fiasco.
LOL it takes us how long just to download something that is even a gig. Just imagine how long it would take if it were an HD DVD movie…”Yes, I think I’ll start downloading tonight so I can have it in time for tomorrow night.”
doesn’t take me long at all to download a gig.
Yay my first news find
lol.
“hehe also the idea of renting via the 360 kinda fits in with that new “expiration tag” on the files hehe”
That is a very good point. That could very well be why they put that!
I don’t think those movies will be for download. That makes zero sense considering the hd capacity of the xbox360. Selling a bigger hd will not help sell movies online at all. This will be a streaming service and if you look closely, they put the technology in place already … wmv streaming via upnp servers is exactly that.
I do like the idea of beeing able to rent cheap hd movies online and stream them via my 360. I’d like that very much actually. I don’t give a rats ass about hd-dvd or blueray right now because nothing I’d want is available in those formats and it won’t be for a long time. But online renting/streaming is a whole diffrent ballgame. HD Video on demand via XBL - count me in.
hehe also the idea of renting via the 360 kinda fits in with that new “expiration tag” on the files hehe
HD downloads, HDDVD optional, and god i hope tv show downloads soon… im so glad to be on the 360
I think streaming is more likely, but then again people forget something with wmv vc1 encoding they can get the files relatively small (maybe around the size of a large demo?) and you dont have to keep the movie on the harddrive people! Remember the marketplace keeps track so if ever you want to download it again its yours….
AND HERES THE BIGGIE! Zune Marketplace and Xbox Marketplace, are basically 2 of the same, split but they still use the same microsoft points, the next step we will see is them to join, and both marketplaces to have music, tv and movies muahhahaha
but,! if you look at say hbo hd it pales in comparison to hd dvd. single layer discs are 15g. (on a 20g hard drive?) the disc will be better for people into a better picture. the download will be cheaper than buying a movie but be in a class between standard disc and hd dvd.
And what about the storage space? You’d need something like a 100GB drive to store a few movies.
HD WMV i not so big as you think..
but what about series like Lost in HD, you download, you watch once.. auto download mainwhile you watch the second.. etc
i need 500 gb
I remember when Xbox 360 launched they were talking about making a deal with either Cinemanow or Movielink to do movie distribution over IP. Microsoft has had a relationship with Cinemanow for sometime so it’s likely they are going to partner with them to distribute movies over the 360. Movies are typically 3-4 dollars to rent and about 15 to buy so that is in line with the rumors.
I’d definately use the service,the problem is these services typically only rent out movies a little after a year from box office release, and you typically cannot rent movies that are also being sold. New dvd release movies are almost always BUY only, then a few months later become available to rent.
Makes no sense… in the netherlands, movies are rentable from the day they sell it :S
think they will anounce this features with the bigger HD
Damn!!! Now I HAVE to get a harddrive.
I’ve been using the update lately. I’ve been able to watch HDmovies on my xbox from an external usb hard drive. My 200gb hard drive ran about 120$ so I say my idea works better, especially since I didn’t pay for my HD movies.
A rumour? Just check the marketplace. Go to Media > Video > Console and highlight “Movies and Movie trailers”, and the caption there is “Watch full length movies and movie trailers”. The guy who wrote this “rumour” just read the text in the console people
Check for yourself.
maybe instead of downloading the movie till its done….u can stream it?….that would be better for me i think….then u can just stream the movie for 3 or 4 days then it will expire…..on the other hand bad idea!…hahaha….slow connection would equal to alot of buffering and what not…well at least i tried..haha
if it’s set up like Digital Cable, then we wouldn’t need hard drives….it would just stream….and it would stream just fine. I