GameGuide » Blog Archive » XBox Live Movies On Demand

With the latest XBox Live updates, Microsoft proved that they were serious about making headway into the world of the home digital hub. This time they were putting their gaming console into the foray, taking the worlds best gaming machine and making it better. The inclusion of Facebook and Twitter didn’t excite me, but the inclusion of films on demand, even if you have to lower your standards and accept the installation of the dreaded Zune software. Not that the software is anything bad, but when Microsoft launched the Zune music player I promised myself I’d never have anything to do with it. 

With the foreknowledge that I would have to install new software and perform the obligatory update, I had resigned myself to five minutes or more of hanging around, but both the software and the update were performed in the blink of an eye and literally within five minutes of turning on my Xbox I had discovered the only piece of bad news – that there was next to nothing worth watching in the Zune marketplace at present.

The handful of new releases that they had are already in my DVD collection, and if it weren’t for a classic vampire flick that I had wanted to see for some time, I would have had to resort to watching one of my DVDs.

Being a classic movie, the cost was a little less and the option of Hi-Def was not available. But to my delight, the movie started right away and even though it was streaming played without any hiccups. That is to say that it played smoothly with no buffering pauses or anything. If I were to be picky, I would complain that the video quality suffered from compression issues from time to time, and that the sound wasn’t synced properly during the middle of the movie.

I would have to assume that image quality wouldn’t be an issue with a Hi-Def movie, but until Microsoft get a few more movies in their collection, I won’t be giving movies on demand another try.

Despite some of the glaringly obvious issues, the overall experience was a pleasant one. Being able to decide on the spur of the moment that I want to watch a movie and not having to leave the house to go rent something from the local video store is a huge bonus. It makes watching movies almost too easy.

The cost, on the surface is reasonable, but then you have to factor in what kind of broadband plan you have – my standard definition movie clocked up a significant chunk of my 10GB monthly plan, clocking in at 1.37GB. Until New Zealand gets it’s broadband speeds and prices inline with the rest of the developed world, any kind of movie on demand service is going to b hamstrung.

Microsoft may have jumped onboard the movies on demand bandwagon a little early – especially in New Zealand. I remember how when Apple lunched movies on iTunes, that it was initially restricted to the United States. This didn’t make me happy in the slightest, but now in hindsight I can see the value in holding off regional launched until you have all the regional licensing issues sorted (I’m assuming that’s what’s holding back XBox NZ from having a full selection) – it just doesn’t look good offering a near empty service to your customer base.

I’m going to be asking Microsoft what their plans are for stocking the shelves of their virtual Zune Video Store, and I’ll post their reply here.

The Zune Movie Marketplace is a great idea, that will hopefully be ready in time to give you something to watch over the coming holiday season – because we all know that the TV channels won’t have anything worth watching on!

We used the Orcon@Home Gold+ broadband package to test Zune Movies, and as always, we’re more than happy with Orcon.