Microsoft vs. Apple, Movies on Demand?

I suppose it all comes down to content and convenience. I am most likely to use Comcast as they have a lot of content, its easy and I have cable boxes on the TV's I would watch movies on. If I did not have a cable box and had a only 360/ps3 it would be a different story

We have three Mac laptops and a desktop PC and I'm content to go through a small amount of extra effort using programs like Connect360 and MediaLink to stream from my Macs. Xbox Live MarketPlace has a lot of content in HD. For movies I really like, I tend to look for sales on HD-DVDs (RIP) and Blu-ray discs. The video and audio quality is just so much better anyway.

I think the AppleTV is quite neat, but it's not quite cool enough for me to spend more money and hook up another box. I may not be the target though. There are more movie watchers than gamers anyway.

"so I guess the real question is what will the main platform be? What role will future Xbox play?"

The iPod of video on demand isn't here yet. As much as Apple and MS want their AppleTV and 360 to be that iPod, they aren't. Software may fix that, or some not-yet-heard-of device will pop up and everyone will flock to it.

One thing that is for certain is the Bluray is not the format that people care about, nor will it ever be. VOD is where the future is, we just don't know the form yet. Hell, Google may end up with a Youtube box that will take over the movie watching world. HD Youtube with major studio participation, hooked up to the TV? Tell me the public wouldn't eat that up!

"I may not be the target though"

You are here on AVS. That means you are absolutely not the target. The future of DVD, Bluray, and VOD will be decided by people that care about convenience over quality, just like it was decided for MP3 vs CD/SACD/DVD-A.

Its a huge, huge good idea.....but its not revolutionary, its been coming for years. The biggest problems that still must be addressed are as follows (IMHO, of course):

1) Nobody wants another frickin device in their AV rack....DVD player, Cable Box, VHS player in some cases....AV receiver perhaps....more wires? More connections? Apple TV is another box you have to buy and a service you have to subscribe to. And, for alot of people their cable box or DVR already has stuff like this. And if you are a comcast user, supposedly there are literally thousands of VoD channels coming soon.

2) Bandwidth continues to be a problem, and if VoD takes off watch bandwidth become an even BIGGER problem. Not only are we talking about clogged pipes in heavy-use areas, but we are talking about LIMITS imposed by your ISP. Cox has a 20gb to 40gb download limit on its accounts, Comcast has a magical mystery number that nobody knows (its probably 80-100gb or so).....but if you go over those amounts, you get warned..then you get booted off for a year or more. Streaming HD over the internet will use up bandwidth. Big movie watchers will be affected by this.

DOCIS 3.0 and Fiber can help solve this, but we're 3-6yrs away from major deployment of those to "most people".

3) Having to shift the average American user away from a "I WANT IT NOW RIGHT NOW!" mentality since most films, particularly in HD, will need some time (bandwidth dependent) to cache up the movie to provide an uninterrupted experience.

Apple is trying to strike while the iron is hot, but I think trying to get people to buy yet ANOTHER device with a glowing macintosh apple on the thing is the wrong direction.

"Nobody wants another frickin device in their AV rack....DVD player, Cable Box, VHS player in some cases."

People don't carry around their iPod along with their Discman and Walkman.

I dont quite get the analogy, unless you're telling me you expect people to buy the Apple device and throw out their DVD player and DVD collections, PS3's and Cable Boxes....

Now, are they supposed to buy one of these for every TV?

"I dont quite get the analogy, unless you're telling me you expect people to buy the Apple device and throw out their DVD player and DVD collections, PS3's and Cable Boxes...."

At no point did I ever imply that the AppleTV is the device of choice.

The analogy points out that there are different types of tech people. Group A would be the pack rats that still have their VHS and audio cassettes, their 8 tracks and vinyl. It's pretty obvious that these people don't care about how many things are hooked up. If they already have VHS, DVD, and a cable box, then what is one more box? Group B would be your average person that really only relies on one tech at a time. Currently they have DVD players, having taken a couple years to give up on the VHS collection. For a while they will have a VOD device along with a DVD player, but will eventually give up on DVD and only use the VOD box. This is overwhelming the group of people that you find in the wild. Group C would be AVSers and the like. In general, early adopters, probably too many devices, prefer quality over convenience. Manufactures don't care about us and what we want.

In short, yes, the average person is more than willing to give up on any given technology. For the ones that aren't, there are enough young people just starting their own media purchasing to replace them.

"Now, are they supposed to buy one of these for every TV?"

Wow. Using that logic, you make it sound like it is so ungodly unreasonable to have to buy a DVD player for every TV in the house. Was that really such a terrible hardship?

Oh, and the average consumer doesn't care about the PS3, so they won't be throwing it out as they never purchased it to begin with.

There's no way I'd add another device. I've already maxed out both my receiver's inputs and my surge strip's outlets. I like HD on demand services that my cable provider gives and don't care to download movies through my 360.

I really wish cable cards were more popular on tv's. It seems they are on the way out as they only become available on larger tv's.

"There's no way I'd add another device ... I like HD on demand services that my cable provider gives"

So you already added the device?

It's all through the cable box. I can even make it a DVR by slapping on a USB HDD.

oh, so you'd just have to ADD A usb storage DEVICE?


and in most cases its an eSATA device, not usb.

All this talk about adding another device is bunk since presumably all of us on here have a 360. So really it would just be adding a new service. But bandwidth will defiantly be an issue.
While I for one enjoy renting movies on my 360, if its a good movie I'll go out and buy it. I don't know how long its going to be avaible on the 360. If I want to watch it at a friends house or on my laptop away from home its a bit of pain ( or near impossible with the laptop) to easily watch that movie again.
Oceans Thirteen is a perfect example I bought it on HD DVD and now I see its no longer on the Canadian video marketplace. I've probaly watched it 4 times (HD DVD) since it came out had I relied on Xbox video market place I wouldn't be able to watch it anymore.

Mine lacks eSATA, but I can use a 2.5" HDD with a USB adapter. No need for an extra power plug and can be tucked away safely and out of sight.

"All this talk about adding another device is bunk since presumably all of us on here have a 360. So really it would just be adding a new service."

You're assuming that I find Live's video offerings acceptable with that statement. I don't.

what resolution are these downloads? b/c all the comparison are with dvd, are they 480p? what A/V codecs? my main concern would be PQ/SQ.

The HD offerings are 720p, 6.8 Mbps VC-1, with 5.1ch DD sound.

720p24, I think. The HD presentations are pretty damned good. Though no real competition for HD video disc, they'll usually blow the SD DVD of the same material away.

In TiVo Community Forums we were recently discussing this, and I dug up a few critical comparisons and posted them here. Most impressive were two video encoding professionals who've posted comparisons of XBLVS encodings to the same HD DVD in their blogs (start with the paragraph above my second quote). Using a software tool, they found some grayscale problems in the Xbox encodings that were not easily detectible with the naked eye and walked away very impressed with the quality of the XBL encode. Not as good as the HD video disc encode, but the difference wasn't something that Joe Average would be able to see using typically uncalibrated or user-adjusted "home theater" equipment.

For me, it depends on how I feel about seeing the movie. For some things, renting an HD XBLVS encode is more than good enough, but if it's a very visual movie with a highly touted high-resolution or lossless soundtrack encoding on disc, I'd just as soon wait to buy or rent the Blu-ray. It's nice to have the option, though.

720p24 in VC1, so figure a 4-8 gig file in VC1 depending......and those will hold up very well to disc-based 1080p encodes.

Its scary how in 10 years we've gone from one codec (MPEG 2) that does 480p in about 8 gigs, to a codec like VC1 or H264 that can take that same output at 480p and have it take up less than 2 gigs, with no loss of quality.

that is XBLVS right? what about Apple? surely they use H264. do we know what spec's they use?

its less than xbox live.... ive heard they use 5 mbit mpeg4 encodes.

What's the benefit/purpose of 720p24? The 360 eventually outputs 720p60. Right? So why require the console-side conversion? Reduced file size?

Reduced file size and, of course, all films in theatres are shown at 24fps. They do the 3:2 pulldown for you at the encode.

H264 and VC1 (WMV) are fairly identical......720p file sizes at about 5000-8000mbps should be largely identical.

It just shows up how woefully inefficient MPEGII is....requireing high bitrates and large file sizes for relatively low resolution.

"It just shows up how woefully inefficient MPEGII is"

MPEG2 first hit the mainstream 11 years ago or so. Of course it's pretty poor today. For the time it was damn impressive, and better yet, actually ran on the available hardware. None of the current MPEG4 variants would have been physically able to real-time decode on any hardware of the time. Really though, the MPEG4 variants are only 2-4x more efficient depending on the material. I find that to be a pretty poor improvement for the timeframe we are talking about.