TV and film downloads coming to US 360 this month

By Tom Bramwell Published 7 November, 2006

From South Park to Superman.

Xbox 360 will soon allow American gamers to buy TV shows and rent films thanks to licensing agreements for standard- and high-definition content signed with major TV and film companies.

Announced last night, the deal will kick in on 22nd November and see 360 owners in the US able to download the likes of South Park, remastered Star Trek episodes and films like The Matrix and Superman Returns in either 480p or 720p resolution.

Everything will be paid for through Xbox Live Marketplace and saved to the hard disk, with estimates suggesting a high-def film will occupy 5GB of space. In the case of the film rentals, the files will stick around on the drive for two weeks, and delete themselves within 24 hours of viewing.

Browsing Marketplace, potential buyers will be able to preview episodes and watch film trailers to help make their minds up. It will also be possible to watch videos as they download thanks to buffering technology.

For now the deal only covers the US, with Microsoft striking up agreements with CBS, MTV, Paramount, Turner Broadcasting, Ultimate Fighting Championship and Warner Bros., and aiming to deliver up to 1,000 hours of content by the end of 2006 - 200 of which will be in 720p.

However it leaves some questions unanswered, most significantly those of what approach the company will take outside its homeland, and whether this will expedite the announcement of a higher-capacity hard disk add-on. (Also, on the QT, whether it will be possible to do the "US Live account" trick to gain access closer to home.)

While we wait for someone to get round to those, here are some of the highlights of the content deals Microsoft has signed:

  • "Robot Chicken" and "Aqua Teen Hunger Force" from Adult Swim
  • "CSI," "Survivor" and [re-mastered] "Star Trek" from CBS
  • Emmy and Peabody Award-Winning "South Park" and "Chappelle’s Show" from COMEDY CENTRAL
  • "The Real World" and "Pimp My Ride" from MTV
  • "Avatar: The Last Airbender" and "SpongeBob SquarePants" from Nickelodeon
  • "Skyland" and "The Nicktoons Network Animation Festival" from Nicktoons Network
  • "Nacho Libre" and "Jackass: The Movie" from Paramount Pictures
  • "Carpocalypse" and "Raising the Roofs" from Spike TV
  • "Race Rewind" provided by NASCAR.COM
  • Select episodes of the original season of "The Ultimate Fighter" reality series and the "UFC: All Access" shows from the UFC
  • "Breaking Bonaduce" and "Hogan Knows Best" from VH1
  • "The Matrix," "Superman Returns" and "Batman Forever" from Warner Bros. Home Entertainment
Picture of Tom.

About Tom Bramwell

Tom is Operations director of Eurogamer Network and Editor-at-Large of Eurogamer.net. He joined the company in February 2000.

Read more articles from Tom by visiting the Tom Bramwell archive page.

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Comments (46) Latest comment 5 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • MadMirko #1 5 years ago

    Great idea.

    How's the DRM?

  • ProtoformX #2 5 years ago

    I think to be truly effective this would require a bigger hard drive to be released. The 360 takes up about 7Gb of info on the HDD at any one time. That only leaves 14Gb of info left to be used. That's only two films, so if you wanted to download a few of them, well, you couldn't. Not with the current HD anyway.
    I wonder if you can move them to a PC using that USB-to-360 HD interface device and if so would that have any effect on the automatic deletion of them?

  • RipleyUK #3 5 years ago

    Sofa, thats unbelievably cruel, yet I can't stop lolling.

    What I'm more interested in is the price though. How many MS Points is this likely to use?
    If a film in high-def is deleted 24 hours after watching it, and you have two weeks to watch it, I don't think slapping something like a 1k+ points tag on it will win this system many fans.
    Sure, I'd download them- if they were more like 800, or less. Call me tight fisted, but I'd rather not pay more money just for the ability to download and watch a film once, when I can go rent it for multiple nights from a video store.

  • Max_Powers #4 5 years ago

    Nice idea. Hopefully they'll release it in the EU soon as well.

  • morriss #5 5 years ago

    +1

  • BartonFink #6 5 years ago

    Great idea from MS I'm a bit worried about the size of the HDD though. Still good idea. Oh on the pricing, according to Furbs in on of the forum threads Apparently we're looking at 240pts per TV Episode, or 320pts for a movie rental

  • peterfll #7 5 years ago

    Nice enough idea. Buffering is good. Frag issues is not so good. Being stuck with a 20gb hard drive is not good.

  • BartonFink #8 5 years ago

    Definitely 13G is just not enough space for the size of the movies they are talking about. Another worry is just how long is it going to take these things to download? Current BB pipes are just not fat enough at the moment.

  • Hench #9 5 years ago

    Isn't the 22nd of November when PS3 is released?

    Edit: Sorry, my mistake.
    Edited by 1 at 07/11/06 @ 08:38

  • captainrentboy #10 5 years ago

    Seems like quite a cool idea,and it's something MS promised back at launch and have actually gotten around to implementing so you can't complain,but the lack of HDD space is going to need to be rectified somehow though(Where the fook is our 100 GB ones MS?)And hopefully the ole US passport trick will still work for Europeans
    Superman Returns in 720p is pretty sexy for me.And don't take that in a homosexual way.

  • rmg #11 5 years ago

    http://www.ga mevideos.com/video/id/7329 - See the new dash in action.

  • Psi #12 5 years ago

    beginning of the end for sky tv, but giving the helm to m$ damn.... ip tv was gonna happen sooner or later, but a 5gb download... that's not going to be quite hidef (unless they are using divx lol) for 25 hours? my isp would hate me (they do already, they send nasty letters)

    people won't purchase these items until they are at a price where people would rather pay then download. i don't quite see this as a bittorrent killer just yet :p

  • Carlo #13 5 years ago

    Wow! I never saw THAT coming.

    Now, where's the bigger HDD? FFS!

  • the_dudefather #14 5 years ago

    hope we get aqua teen hunger force, even if the internet has been my prime vessel for it so far.

  • CasperCCC #15 5 years ago

    Bastards Bastards Bastards Bastards Bastards.

    Just finished a 120 page report on interactive media in the home. All the way through it are comments about how MS and Sony are idiots if they don't make more of the broadband connections, hard drives and built-in payment systems on the ps3 and 360. Was obvious it was going to happen, but dammit... it should have happened the day after the report was signed off, not the day before.

    Now I have to go back and change every single mention. Tits.

    Good idea though. Bigger hard drive would be good, but with the films then you're effectively only renting them anyway - only need room for one at a time.

  • moggsy #16 5 years ago

    While a bigger HD would be useful, remember these films aren't to keep - you're just renting them. So it wouldn't be too much hardship to just have one on there at once and delete it before downloading the next.

  • Eighthours #17 5 years ago

    So we're likely to get different content in the UK? Curses.

    My Family Season 1 for 1200 points, anyone? :)

  • chupachups #18 5 years ago

    HD films only take up 5gb, less than a normal DVD? So why do we need blu-ray and hd-dvd then?

  • Darren #19 5 years ago

    If this service is to work then Microsoft surely need to release a larger hard drive for the 360 bearing in mind that a typical standard definition DVD movie will fill upto 9 GB of hard drive space and is typically 5 GB in size. And if they do release a hard drive then they need to address how people with 20 GB ones can transfer their content over to the new one as hassle free as possible.

  • Khanivor #20 5 years ago

    "Avatar: The Last Airbender"

    Is a frickin kid's show? TransAtlantic language differences FTW!

    Bigger HD and this is a winner. FFS MS, allow us to use the drives we have on our PCs as sotrage space for media content for the X360.

  • Salvia #21 5 years ago

    So MS have got their wish and now have a media portal in quite a few homes.
    The original Xbox was touted as a games mahcine pure and simple up until launch when they suddenly changed tack and said 'Yes of course it's a media player. The aim is to get media portal in everyone's home and if we have to disguise it as a games machine then so be it'.
    Renting/Buying movies and tv shows? EA charging for cheat codes and stuff that's on the disc already? Buy half a game at a time via Live?
    Get used to it, it's only going to get worse.

  • Psychotext #22 5 years ago

    I think we'll see a 60gb drive minimum from MS soon and I wouldn't be surprised if they include a 20gb with the core by default.

  • crazyhorse174 #23 5 years ago

    Will many people download this stuff?

    I mean, when you can pay Amazon/Blockbuster/etc a set amount a month for unlimited DVD hire, why pay an individual amount (even a very small amount) per film?

  • paulf #24 5 years ago

    @chupachups and fluffy - the size of the hd file depends on the compression, bluray and hd-dvd movies will be probably less compressed than their download brethren hence taking up more storage space. All in all a good idea by microsoft and imo what the long term goal of xbox live is, to provide a media hub where you can get movies, games and music on demand. Like others have suggested though xbox 360 needs a bigger hdd to hold all the new goodies you can dload

  • BadDevotions #25 5 years ago

    doubt i'd download movies - that's what sky/blockbusters are for. the only + as far as I can see is the ability to dl hd movies. but I don't care about that, my tv isn't hi def... yet.

  • chupachups #26 5 years ago

    "bluray and hd-dvd movies will be probably less compressed than their download brethren hence taking up more storage space"

    So presumably these 5gb HD downloads would have fairly poor picture quality if they're so compressed? Sort of destroys the point of HD really...

  • crazyhorse174 #27 5 years ago

    "beginning of the end for sky tv"

    I think thats taking things a bit far though saying that...

  • Zafrano #28 5 years ago

    I would never dream of watching movies on the 360 as long as its so noisy...

  • paulf #29 5 years ago

    @chupachups obviously its difficult to say without seeing them next to each other, the quality wont be as good as bluray/hddvd but it should still be as good as the quality as the dloads on live at the moment. Also I believe that bluray/hddvd movies are stored in 1080p so that would take up more space than 720p

  • asphaltcowboy #30 5 years ago

    Zafrano: The main noise from the 360 is when the disc driving is spinning up/down. This will all be running off your HDD...

  • Supra #31 5 years ago

    This move is a good example of why it's silly to nitpick over whether or not Live's 4 million plus subscribers are Gold or Silver. The fact is, they have a 4 million strong market to sell music (eventually), films, Arcade titles, etc to. And when Massive acquisition enabled in-game advertising revenue comes in, the Xbox 360 business model will quickly become a profitable one. Gold subscribers or no.

  • Psychotext #32 5 years ago

    I find the noise of the 360 an interesting subject. I've seen some of them that when the drive spins up you can hardly hear yourself talk and others that were whisper quiet. Never really worked out how there could be so much difference with what should essentially be the same hardware.

    Still, would be nice to see an improvement on this sort of thing when they do the die shrink next year.

  • Zafrano #33 5 years ago

    asphaltcowboy: I still think its to noisy just running from a hdd. Its actually the reason why I have not used the 360 to anything but playing games. Maybe im just a "must have low noise" freak ;-)

  • Salvia #34 5 years ago

    "The main noise from the 360 is when the disc driving is spinning up/down"

    No, the main noise from the 360 is the console as a whole. The disc 'driving' spinning up and down only adds to that noise.

  • Freeman01 #35 5 years ago

    I am missing the point, I pay for Xbox Live, I pay for the movie which is going to take a considerable chunk of whats left on my 20GB drive and then its going to delete itself off once I've watched it (or in 2 weeks). C'mon but thats taking the piss!

    Also how long is it going to take to actually download it. I mean it wouldn't be to bad if I could transfer it to my PC or rip in onto a disc, but I can't even do that.

  • Talha #36 5 years ago

    Everthing is coming to 360 except a decent number of games, it seems.

  • paulf #37 5 years ago

    @freeman - i suppose that all depends on the cost, if the downloads are of a similar price to rentals from blockbuster or vod from sky/ntl then it's not much difference. And obviously the amount of time it takes to dload depends on your broadband speed. On a 10 meg connection however you should be able to dload 4 gigs in around 1 hour

  • The_Programmer #38 5 years ago

    "Everthing is coming to 360 except a decent number of games, it seems."

    Are you just born dumb. There's going to be about 160 games available by Christmas. How many will the Wii have or you could always play with your PS3 over Christmas.

  • KD #39 5 years ago

    I'm guessing M$ will just move they're hd wmv format to the xbox, i got to watch 5th element as one of those files and for only 4gb looked fine.

    I like the way people are acting shocked and disgusted that they cant keep a rental :)

  • Psychotext #40 5 years ago

    Prices seem reasonable for me. Cost less than NTL on demand and it's essentially the same service with higher quality files. Hopefully they'll be able to get the new releases on it. I watch most films when I get a spare couple of hours here and there so unlimited DVD rentals don't really work for me.

  • albundy #41 5 years ago

    "I like the way people are acting shocked and disgusted that they cant keep a rental :)"

    I know. It has to count up there as the most retarded thing I've seen in a while. Listen, gamers are cynical. Any time sombody tries to do something innovative, you get an army of utter mongs nitpicking. Unless it's Nintendo, of course. Then everyone just dances around the campfire, singing "Kumbaya My Lord" to an gold idol of Shigeru Miyamoto-san. But anyone else, and it's cynical time. "Oh noes, I can't keep my RENTAL!!!"

    WTF???

  • chupachups #42 5 years ago

    Not only are they shocked at not being able to keep a rental, they're shocked that only three or four films will fit on the HDD.

    Only one film will fit in my DVD player, should I take it back to the shop?

  • chronom4n #43 5 years ago

    expect to see the 100gig hdd to appear soon.

  • Scimarad #44 5 years ago

    "estimates suggesting a high-def film will occupy 5GB of space"

    So, how much space do people have on their 360 HDDs at the moment?

  • Oceadge #45 5 years ago

    "So, how much space do people have on their 360 HDDs at the moment?"

    I'm struggling to keep 500 - 800 MB free right now.

  • dredd97 #46 5 years ago

    oohh seems the Hi-def versions of TV shows cost more than the low def ones...

    (CSI season Two - 240gp for low def, 320gp for high def)

    ok, so if you download said programme to your HDD, is it yours to watch as long as it's on the HDD or is that price for a strict time limit, say 24 hours?