There is so much news regarding Microsoft’s new Xbox Live Video service that is due out on November 22nd, it is rediculous, and a bit hard to seperate the fact from the fiction. Here are some details given out by popular news sources. Don’t give any of them too much weight. Try to hold off on getting too excited until the service is launched and we have all had a chance to try it out.
Engadget has a great point by point list on everything that’s going on with the upcoming service:
- Microsoft has not yet disclosed pricing for downloads, but it will be in Microsoft points.
- Movies will be “rental” only, TV for “purchase” only.
- Neither TV nor movies are streamed; they are only downloaded, although you can stream short preview clips from the Live interface.
- You can only download content to your Xbox 360 drive — not to an external drive.
- Your “purchased” TV programs can be downloaded an infinite amount of times to an infinite amount of consoles; you may also play them back on friends’ 360s with your removable drive.
- Deleted TV shows can be re-downloaded later; HDTV shows can be re-downloaded in either HDTV or SD.
- Movies can be watched an unlimited number of times the first 24 hours. Plays after that period will cost the same as the initial download, although the movie data isn’t necessarily deleted. You can keep the movie data on your drive up to 14 days without re-downloading it.
- An average HD movie download should be between 4-5GB, and a two hour SD movie would be 1.6GB.
- An average 1 hour (44 min) HDTV download should be about 2.2GB, and an average 1/2 hour (22 min) HDTV download should be about 1GB. A 1 hour SDTV download should be about 600MB, and a 1/2 hour SDTV download should be about 300MB.
Launch titles
- Aqua Teen Hunger Force
- Avatar: The Last Airbender
- Batman Forever
- Breaking Bonaduce
- Carpocalypse
- Chappelle’s Show
- CSI
- Hogan Knows Best
- Jackass: The Movie
- Jericho
- The Matrix
- M:i:III
- Nacho Libre
- Nicktoons Network Animation Festival
- Numb3rs
- Pimp My Ride
- Race Rewind (NASCAR NEXTEL Cup Series races)
- Raising the Roofs
- The Real World
- Robot Chicken
- Skyland
- South Park
- SpongeBob SquarePants
- Star Trek (original)
- Superman Returns
- 50 fights from Ultimate Fighting Championship, and some episodes from The Ultimate Fighter