If Microsoft succeeds in its way of delivering High Definition movies as it hopes, it looks like that if HD DVD and Blu-ray fail to grab much of a market share, HD movies delivered as downloads may become the successor to DVD, at least when it comes to rentals. While Microsoft may be set to launch a HD DVD add-on for its Xbox 360, they are preparing to launch a High Definition movie and TV programme download service that would allow Xbox 360 users to download content directly to their console directly from the Internet without the use of a PC.
Microsoft aims to offer over 1,000 hours of content by the end of the year, including MTV & CBS TV programming and movies from Paramount and Warner Bros. This Xbox Live service will offer TV programming as purchases and movies as rentals. With the growing xBox 360 market, this is another aim to bring Microsoft into the living room and thus take on other services such as Apple's iTunes which also offers movies and TV programming as well as Apple's iTV set-top box. So far, no pricing has been announced, although it is expected to be competitive against other services for standard definition programming. There will be a small premium for the content in high definition.
While the content will be stored on the Xbox 360's hard drive as it is downloaded, unfortunately customers will not be able to transfer or move content off the Xbox 360 to a PC or any other device. On the other hand, should the popularity of the service grow enough, Microsoft may look into other options such as larger hard drives for the console.
As TV programming will be offered as purchases, it is unclear at this time how Microsoft will allow consumers to back up their purchased content, particularly if consumers will not be allowed to transfer content from the console to anything else, unless they give consumers the option to re-download it if they replace their console or otherwise accidentally lose a programme they downloaded. Finally, while Microsoft plans on offering movies in high definition, they are unlikely going to match the quality of a movie on Blu-ray or HD DVD. For example, assuming a typical Blu-ray or HD DVD title is ~25GB, it would take at least 18 hours to transfer this over a typical 3Mb link running at its theoretical maximum rate.
Further info can be read at the San Francisco Chronicle here.
