First Look: Xbox LIVE update, Facebook, Twitter, HD Movies

Mike Bantick
Thursday, 22 October 2009 09:41

Entertainment

The service will test your internet connection to see if HD streaming is an option.  Under the beta test, with only a small population online to pull content, this took three tests before acknowledging our Optus cable internet as worthy of the HD stream.

“For Australia New Zealand we have mirror servers that are either nearby or on-shore in Australia.  These are third party companies that host, so if someone requests a piece of content, then that content gets pulled into the country , so next time a person requests the same content, instead of going all the way back to the original source, it will be served locally” Jenkins said.

So with more users, caching of data locally will boost the ‘insta’ part of this ‘insta-on’ movies service.

Using a Siverlight multi-stream based technology; the instant-load is pretty impressive.  A HD movie kicks in with only a momentary mottling of the picture (in worst case, as per SD DVD quality), before enjoying a full 1080 visual.  Plus there is always the option (if your Xbox 360 has a hard drive) of delaying the watching of your movie by choosing download instead, this will allow greater buffering across the WAN link and therefore no risk of quality loss.



iTWire experience no quality loss in our time with the service, and all normal video functionality is built in, rewind, fast forward, skip chapter, zoom options and so forth.  In keeping with the Facebook and Twitter social components of this update, Microsoft has integrated Friends and Party aspects into movie watching as well.  In fact, Party invitee Avatars can be shown sitting on a couch, virtually enjoying the flick also.  

But of concern, is the dreaded ISP download cap so prevalent in this country.  Jenkins mentioned his experience as being for a typical 2 hour High Definition movie at 1080P that the data consumption would peak at around 6GB.  A typical Standard Definition film clocking in about 1.5GB of usage, these figures are certainly on par with our experience.

In means those Xbox LIVE users on unmetered plans with companies such as IINET and to a lesser extent TPG will be less concerned about the implications of HD movie download than others.  ISP download caps may, quite literally, be a showstopper for some.

When queried, Microsoft assured iTWire that they are working on broadening the choice of unmetered Xbox LIVE data with other Australian ISP’s

The new [southern] spring Xbox LIVE dashboard update is due to be released sometime in November.