HUGE news in the digital living room today; Microsoft is partnering with CBS, MTV, Warner Brothers and others to provide digital television and movie downloads direct to the Xbox 360 via XBox Live. I’m not going to rehash all the details simply because so many other folks have covered it; in fact, here’s a few links for you on the topic:
- Microsoft press release
- Engadget’s hands on with the Xbox Live Video download functionality
- Major Nelson’s coverage
Essentially, you’ll be able to use Microsoft points to download SD or HD content (720p) for storage and later playback. Looks like movies will have a limited viewing time while television eps can be stored and transferred around. All in all, very intriguing and no surprise to me; the 360 is made to stream and watch video around the house and I’ve been watching HD content on mine for about a year over WiFi.
Here’s the more interesting question in my mind, and although I’ve only skimmed the major articles on the news (so I might have missed it), I’m wondering: WHERE IS ZUNE IN ALL OF THIS?
It’s one thing to get content to the living room, but I have to believe that we’ll see some Zune announcements really "Zune" on moving this content from the 360 to the portable media player. We’ll probably hear about an Xbox Live upgrade for the 360 to allow for this, but this is a missed opportunity as just the mention of Zune support in the future could have helped Microsoft in "The iPod War". Content delivery is just the first step, when you can placeshift it to mobile devices, you make the entire situation that much more appealing….
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