High-definition movies and television programmes will be coming soon to an Xbox 360 near you, and may just solve the problem of choosing between the Blu Ray and HD DVD disc formats by picking neither.
Windows client business manager Mike Hughes said that Xbox Live Marketplace’s high-definition film and programme downloading service should be coming to we Europeans ‘pretty soon’ and in the meantime has been doing extremely well in the US where it was launched just over a year ago.
Hughes told siliconrepublic.com: “Content is moving away from the container: eventually high-definition content is going to move onto the internet more and more.
“If you take something like what Microsoft has done with Xbox Live Video in the US, which has been available over a year now: already it has overtaken some of the big cable channels.”
Currently Windows Live Marketplace has a few hundred hours of high-definition content for download including movies like 300 and Superman which can be downloaded and paid through an Xbox Live account.
“Essentially you have rented a HD DVD without having left the house,” said Hughes.
“It gets piped down to your Xbox and you can watch it on your big screen TV, or if you’re using Xbox Media Centre extender you can watch it in whatever room you want to.”
By Marie Boran
