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

Yawn

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

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.

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

is Mexico included on this 18 countries ?

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

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...

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

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

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

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

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

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

"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."

www.xbox.com/.../centerstage.htm

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.....

great to see that this feature is coming to Norway.

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.

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.

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

@Fletch955

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