The Xbox Video Marketplace: A Compelling Distribution Scheme?

Continued from 'Internet-Based Movie Distribution: The Neverending Story'….

V for Vandetta looked….jaw-dropping awesome in high-def. I didn't have the HD DVD to benchmark against, unfortunately, but another videophile did the dirty work for me, with impressive results. Keep in mind that he's comparing a 6.1 GByte WMV9 encode against its counterpart on a 30 GByte dual-layer HD DVD, therefore very likely a much larger file. And keep in mind, too, that 6.1 GBytes is probably around the same size as the MPEG-2 encoded standard definition version of the film on conventional red laser DVD. See why I was excited about the potential for red laser DVD in conjunction with a modern video codec? Here's another way to look at it: the movie was 2 hours, 12 minutes and 33 seconds long, so the 6.1 GByte 720p presentation had an average playback bitrate of just over 6 Mbps. Not bad.

I also tried to download the cheaper ($4), smaller (1.7 GBytes) standard-def version of V for Vandetta to quality-compare, up-scaled by the console, against the high-def counterpart. But I wasn't successful. The Marketplace happily took my money (I'd earlier reported that if you pay for the high-def version of a video you get the standard-def version for free, but the fine print specifies that this deal is for paid content only, not rental) but then reported that 'media usage rights could not be downloaded'. Apparently you can't have two versions of the same film on the same console at the same time. A quick call to Xbox tech support restored 320 points to my account cache.

I waited a day to see if the 'expires after 24 hours of initial viewing' licensing terms worked as advertised (alas, they did), then deleted the file on Saturday evening and proceeded to purchase ($2) and download Season 10: Episode 10 of South Park (I'm not going to tell you what it was about, but you can see for yourself…may the prudish among you consider yourselves warned).This was a much better experience from an instant-gratification aspect; the 249.74 MByte file completely downloaded in slightly less than 28 minutes (that's 1.2 Mbps….my DSL line was the bottleneck this time) and, because the Xbox 360's media player supports progressive downloads, I could begin watching the episode after 13 minutes (45% of the file download) had elapsed. The episode was 22 minutes, 15 seconds long, translating to an average encoded bitrate of 1.5 Mbps. And compare the playback time to the download time….the file downloaded in near-realtime, again held back by my DSL connection's downstream speed.

So does Xbox Video Marketplace have merit? For TV shows, I'm not sold. But keep in mind a few factors:

a) I don't watch much television, and have even less motivation to purchase televison episodes for posterity.

b) I have plenty of other avenues available to time-shift what little television I do watch.

c) Blockbuster's only a mile away, and I can get multiple TV episodes on a single DVD.

For movies, I'm much more bought in to the idea. 2+ days to download a movie is unpalatable (I don't even want to think, far from calculate, how much electricity I used keeping my console on that long). However, my subsequent South Park experience suggests that was an embryonic glitch (and that perhaps I need to invest in a higher-speed WAN link, although I agree that a P2P-enhanced Marketplace would be a good idea). Rent a standard-def movie for $4, start the download in the mid-afternoon and have it sitting on your console ready to watch in an up-scaled fashion over dinner? Sure, I can buy into that; it's cheaper than Blockbuster's standard rate, plus there's no commute time and expense to factor in. Remember, too, that you can now queue up to three different items for download on the Xbox 360; how's an overnight fetch of three films sound to you?

My wife was initially hung up on the rental content expiration timelines; 14-days after the download begins, and 24 hours after the content's first viewed. After we talked about it for a while, she realized that practically speaking, the terms weren't very onerous; rarely does she not get through a movie within 24 hours, and 14 days is longer than a typical brick-and-mortar store's rental duration. But conceptually it bothered her upon initial consideration, and visceral responses like that are important. Microsoft and its content partners will need to consider reactions like hers as they promote the service.

As for me, the missing piece is the inability to stream, move and/or replicate the content to other devices, such as LAN-connected PCs, PDAs and portable media players. Zune, I suspect, will soon have a role to play here, especially since it and the Xbox 360 share a common Marketplace Points currency scheme. Stay tuned….

Followup: I forgot to mention that I also took advantage of AOL's free-movie Saturday last weekend. My wife's never seen Easy Rider so that was my choice; once again, the download max'd out my DSL bandwidth. Or should I say downloads….along with the full-resolution movie, I also got a free low-resolution file suitable for playback on a small-screen portable device. It's DRM-encrypted using PlaysForSure, however, which excludes Zune. Along with, for that matter, my video iPod