Yesterday we saw the launch of the Xbox Video Marketplace which allows you to rent movies to watch on your internet connected Xbox 360. JJ Hawkins has already pointed out how you can get 1600 free Marketplace points to buy some video rentals. The prices of the individual video rentals are also outlined by JJ, and the prices aren't too bad.
The rental length of a video is 14 days after download or 24 hours from when you first press play.
Brian Lam of Gizmodo has pointed out the major flaw with the Xbox Video Marketplace; you have to download a huge chunk of the movie before you can start watching it.
When Brian tested a movie download out it took about 7-8 hours to download a 2 hour 1.3GB standard definition movie, at this rate a HD movie would take a whole day. It's not clear yet whether this was due to his connection or a temporary overload of the Xbox servers.
Under good circumstances it has been reported that a movie download could take about an hour. However, to me even this is still a bit too long; most people are always a short drive from the movie rental store.
Video rental over the internet needs to be instant and streamed otherwise you may as well just go to the video store which has a larger choice of videos.
A list of the movies and TV shows available from the Xbox Video Marketplace can be seen here, there are currently only 13 videos in HD, and 50 video in total.
Overall I'm not too impressed with what I have seen from the Xbox 360 marketplace so far.
1. I would rather download my Movies from Peer Impact that uses p2p to deliver rental Movies and while the movies stay on my Hard drive I can earn credits for uploading .
www.peerimpact.com
Posted at 7:50PM on Nov 23rd 2006 by Matt_