June 1st 2009 4:44 pm PT

Instant on 1080p HD just announced

Xbox LIVE members will soon be able to stream 1080p HD content from Xbox LIVE. All content will be upgraded. Plus, the video store will be coming to a bunch of new countries for a total of 18.

Archive By Larry Hryb, Xbox LIVE's Major Nelson

  • CARNAGE RULES

    Great news. Now maybe all the whining little B@stards in other countries will stop crying about what we get and they don’t.

  • Shonk

    Yawn

  • nastyswan

    I don’t understand what it means. Yeah, dumb me.

  • KineticOnline

    Does this mean Video rentals, or TV shows too?

  • Doug DeJulio

    Hopefully this is in addition to the option to download it, for folks who don’t have the bandwidth to support full streaming of 1080p content. If this is *replacing* downloading, well, that’s not really a good thing.

  • Kebabkongen

    Can someone confirm what new countries we’re talking about?

  • IIII Bobby IIII

    is Mexico included on this 18 countries ?

  • ShaggyB

    all movies are offered in 1080p with no wait on download… look out blu-ray…… no disc or player needed

  • Briguymaine

    remember in last weeks podcast when Major said something like “you were there when they announced X at E3 09″? seriously? these are those announcements? just slightly disappointing…

  • ImaginedBug

    Any chance we can get a list of the countries and an ETA (per country/region)?

  • Sogeman

    Fingers crossed for Austria. Not that I will buy any movie, but it is a step in the right direction.

  • shane86

    How does it work? there isn’t any streaming involved. Curiouser and curiouser

  • Ox Pson

    1080p movies, instant HD streaming, all of Europe invited (except Portugal, sorry guys) – BOOM!
    about 1 hour ago from web

    http://twitter.com/AceyBongos

    Wow, finally is Sweden getting something!!!!!!!!!!!

  • AK ReubenDR

    I wonder how they’re going to do all that without downloads.

  • DL CyberSkull

    That’s nice. Now then, does this mean 1080p Netflix?

  • ShaggyB

    my money is on youtube style streaming….. movie starts instantly…. yet all of the movie isnt on your system….

  • Kebabkongen

    “Microsoft announced it will more than double the number of markets where Xbox LIVE offers its TV shows and movies, growing from eight to 18, by adding Australia, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, and Switzerland. Xbox LIVE members in these markets will have access to instant on 1080p video.”

    http://www.xbox.com/en-US/community/events/e3/centerstage.htm

  • ShaggyB

    CyberSkull: Netflix is not the same as the video market place…. 1080p Netflix would be up to Netflix to provide…. This sounds more like market place content…. ie video rentals…. Makes it a competitor of Blu-ray….

    We will have to see if it works… but blu-rays big competition now is digital download…. microsoft just fired the first shot…..

  • technofranki

    great to see that this feature is coming to Norway.

  • rogXue

    Unless they start a subscription service like Netflix I’m not interested. I’m not wasting alot of money on mass downloads/charges when I can just do a subscription service. Make a $20/month unlimited instant plan with release date availability and I’m in.

  • Ahmedz

    18?
    WOW!

    is…..Bahrain in there?

  • ImaginedBug

    Thanks Kebabkongen for the link and list of countries. Can’t wait to see what kind of pricing they’ll come up with, though I won’t get my hopes up it’ll be interesting to use regularly.

  • Fletch955

    Does 1080p look just as good over a component only 360 as it does a HDMI 360?

  • oldmess

    Damn… As you can see from my gamercard’s country I’m pissed. No marketplace, no TV commercials, very few games at stores, no Community Games channel (i’m finishing a degree of computer science and I’m toying around with XNA 3.0…), no nothing. I like this system a lot, but I can’t help but feeling that here in Portugal we have half of the experience that we should have. No wonder Sony got almost 90% of market share in here… But hey, who cares about a small country?… =]

  • K1LLER HORNET

    @Fletch955

    if your TV can support 1080p over component, it will look pretty much the same.

  • MACPH1ST0

    This all sounds great and everything in theory, but until they can get this to actually work in full 1080P with millions of people accessing the servers at once, THEN I’ll be impressed.

  • BFBeast666

    Again, I don’t care. I don’t buy videos from VM because – in my country – it’s too damn expensive for a single-view event. Then there’s the thin selection, the complete lack of TV shows, no multilingual options (becasue frankly, german dubs usually suck). In short, it’s as unattractive as it can get.

  • II W4RLORD II

    This is great news!

  • Alex Atkin UK

    Anyone who thinks 1080p streaming is going to come even close to Blu-ray quality is going to be disappointed.

    Blu-ray use around 25Mbit and its going to be a LONG time until enough people have broadband that fast. Even then, it would cost a LOT in bandwidth costs to stream that high bitrate so it will likely never get that high.

    On a good day I get 5Mbit on my ADSL, the average speed in the UK is supposed to be 3Mbit with the UK government only promising to have 2Mbit access to EVERYONE by 2012.

    So simply put, there is no benefit to Microsoft streaming more than around 3Mbit as it costs them more bandwidth and disk space to do that with very little to gain in return. Even in the US I doubt if you worked it out that the most common bitrate was greater than that. Theres a few people with super-fast connections, but a lot with very slow ones too.

  • ShaggyB

    Alex: but to the average person whom doesnt own a blu-ray player…. will it not be good enough?

    I for one own a blu-ray player and prefer to own discs with content on them… but this is an interesting option for those that own a 360 and dont own a blu-ray player also…..

  • Sogeman

    In the link provided earlier it states that you will need 8 mbit constant for the streaming, so no streaming for me as I am happy if I get my max of 6 mbit for a few minutes.

  • Anonymous

    wooooooooooooooooooooo 1080p instant for usa only ? lol :P

  • tozOL

    Guys put it this way as good as this sounds , and your all speculating still about bandwidth in the UK..seriously do yo think its a coincidence that SKY have jumped on board..with there already 16 meg lines, and yes I do get very close to that constantly.

    Believe me sky is tied to this is some way..you see.
    Take my advice..go get sky broadband NOW if you want to be in on all this xbox stuff, and before you all moan, I’m a normal customer with 16 meg sky, who has I think in 2 years been DC 3 times, because of problems, so for me the perfect match, or should I rephrase that, its going to be your best option for your xbox content.

  • Hastarin

    Finally! Now I won’t have to cringe every time the no Blu-Ray excuse is given. Of course it’s still only an excuse because even presuming these are using the VC-1 codec they obviously aren’t the 20+Mbit/s of Blu-Ray.

    Now if they are reasonably priced, and if you add scheduled downloading so I can download them using my off-peak (3am to 10am) bandwidth, I may actually use it. The 8Mbps requirement means I could probably stream them on a good day, but it would chew through my 40GB peak quota pretty quick too.

    To the question above, 1080p instant on will be in 18 countries as linked in an earlier comment. See http://tinyurl.com/luph3c

  • MetalGearFloppy

    @ tozOL … true, sky’s 16mb would be sufficient I suppose… although the 50mb I get from Virgin would be better ;-)

    Wonder how much rentals of 1080p movies are gonna cost us?

  • Alpha NLD

    Glad this is coming to the Netherlands!

  • wolfzero01

    while this sounds like a cool idea for those who don’t have a Blu-Ray player, its not something that i would use. I like having a physical copy of a movie so I don’t need to deal with the stupid DRM policy of Live. also I don’t have to worry if Live is down, or if my internet connection craps out or suddenly experiences slowdown.

  • blahism

    Fantastic news! I quit buying movies because it was a waste of money, never watch them twice unless its a kids movie and the kids will watch it over and over. In which case a dvd is fine, wouldn’t buy a bd anyway. Instant on 1080p sounds sweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet and definitely puts the pressure on the market. Especially if they tie this into the same services available for media center and what not to make sure there is a large customer base.

  • TragicShaun

    Yeah, sounds nice, but I live in the middle of nowhere and I’m lucky to get 768k downloading. I have netflix and it looks like old VHS movies because of my download speed. What do you bet that I still have to download and wait?

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