I think this would be a great addition to the 360’s functionality, however I doubt most users will be able to utilize such a feature. I for one am not a Direct TV subscriber, I am forced to use one of their competitors services by my appartment complex. (as are alot of us)
My concern is that neither Mocrosoft or Direct TV is going to be willing to offer this service free of charge to Xbox Live subscribers. I already have a sattelite provider and I pay for my service from them, as do most of us. Why would I want to pay additional fees to get the programming already available to me?
A good example of the almost extortion like practices of some of the larger companies is the fact that in order to use my 360 as a DVR I must purchase a whole NEW computer with Windows Media Center Edition.
Boo… I say…… Boo.
I have several computers, why would I pay $500 (approx) for a “media center” PC when I own all of the necessary equipment already?

So in conclusion, I refuse to get excited about NEW content that is useless. And worst of all I will have to look at a new blade reminding me, nay, taunting me with it’s uselessness.

-ONI 23

I’m kinda under the impression you don’t need to be a DirecTV subscriber to use the new blade. The little article posted says that you’ll download HD movies and stream SD movies over the internet. I think DTV is just the content provider. You get the content over the internet.

I’ve already got the HDTV TiVo from DirecTV. I’m thinking this blade won’t be all that for me.

oni 23,
just to let you know, you won’t have to buy a whole new computer with windows media center to stream videos etc. you just have to be patient for when microsoft releases it’s new OS Windows Vista, it will be compatible with the 360, so all you would really need to do is upgrade operating systems (which is something most will do anyways.)

Yay… I can hold 1 hour of HD content on my 360

DesolataX hit it right on the nose.

This is useless until we get more storage anyway. There’s a reason TiVos don’t have 20gigs in them. Are there any plans for bigger hard drives?

I wonder if you’ll be able to connect an external USB hdd for use with the DirecTV blade? I’ve got a 120 gig ext hdd that I’m not using right now.

That’s a really good question.

I’m going to try that right now.

“Are there any plans for bigger hard drives?”

40Gb and 80Gb models are planned for release later this year. And indeed I think an external drive would do the job for media playback.

I hope that the Bigger Hard drive are “360-only,” and if they aren’t, i hope they dont encrypt the HD Would be nice to burn it