9pm tonight (GMT) daylight savings time, is when you're Xbox 360 update will be made available, once again transforming the Xbox 360 Dashboard to offer gamers more features including Facebook, Twitter and Movies On Demand.

Movies On Demand is actually our most sought feature as we're promised 1080p streaming video as well as the ability to stream as part of a party of friends, all watching the same movie at the same time; you can even communicate with one another (though in theory that means wearing your headset while watching the movie - methinks Microsoft needs something like the Wii Speak microphone).

According to Microsoft, locally we'll have access to more than 100 movies with each coming in at 240 Microsoft Points (or around AU$4), which isn't too bad - it's cheaper than Foxtel last time I checked).

If you grab the update, feel free to drop a Comment to tell us what you think.

any word on if it will be unmetered usage :)

it's metered as far as I know, which would mean it'd be a great idea for everyone to switch to iiNET. Here's hoping the other ISPs start following the console umetered usage set in place by them

I believe iiNet have said that Movies on Demand is not included in the unmetered classification for Xbox Live traffic.

well that sucks

And rather than just repeat rumors I heard on the internet, I'll provide a source.

In partnership with Xbox, iiNet is now offering unmetered Xbox LIVE content (excludes all paid for content such as movies etc) on all iiNet broadband plans. This means you can download all the free game demos, trailers, arcade games and console updates without it affecting your monthly quota.

http://freezone.iinet.net.au/xbox.html

I would have thought that 'Node would be all over that s***, they mirror like crazy men?

Movies On Demand is actually our most sought feature

That would be great if Xbox live was a free zone on Bigpond.

Humf............

dang, my xbox live membership just ran out.

For those of you looking at renewing your membership, don't pay $80 for a year at your local retail outlet when you can pay

$50 for 13 months at mygamecard

Thank me later, preferably in a dark alley somewhere.

last edited by MatchFixa at 12:55:09 17/Nov/09

with those movies, how long do you have them for? is it limited to a time frame or a certain number of views?

24 hours from your first watch.


but its going to fizzle.. i know theres people out there happy with their 50+50 plans but honestly each movie is going to rape a couple of gig at least AND we have no idea if our connections will honestly be able to do this as smoothly as made out in the video presentation.

i would love to see this cause companies to take a serious revamp of their pricing structures but its not going to happen so its just gunna die in the arse for the average home user which is who they are ideally targetting.

It just seems like we take one step forward and two back when it comes to online distribution of media.

We're getting closer anyway. Data aside, $4 for an on-demand high def movie is about right, and I reckon TV could come in at about 50-75 cents per ep?

Uncapping the data could cause a massive collapse in revenue among the ISP players who make money out of the 50GB+ linux ISO crowd, unless they can get a cut of the fees for the content.

I would pay $4 to DL these movies on my xbox if I wasn't on a 15Gb plan. This needs to be unmetered if it has a chance of working for me even on a larger plan.

just watched the avatar preview via the new zune thing... ran pretty smooth, first 5 seconds looked dodgy then it went a bit funny about 30 seconds in for about 2 seconds besides those 2 points it ran pretty much perfect 150cm plasma used... looked gorgeous. but a 3 minute preview ran about 300 mb so i think renting movies is going to be a no go for most average joes.

I believe iiNet have said that Movies on Demand is not included in the unmetered classification for Xbox Live traffic.

Yup, only games and game trailers. When they announced that XBox Live content was going to be free it was when this stuff wasn't available :) Any new stuff isn't included.

Yeah, I'd happily pay $4 to watch a new movie, but not while its eating up huge chunks of my quota.

At $4 for a movie, a one month delay and $7 for new releases, it still makes piracy and your video store significantly better options

but as a starting point it's good enough, but it will fail here as-is. That's fine though, Microsoft have lots of money to lose. They can pretend it failed because they prempted the NBN but it's the price point and quota cost.

Most people don't hire just one movie at a time from the video store, older titles are very cheap, and you'll still need to duck out anyway to stock up on drinks and junkfood.

people still go to video stores?

i havent been to the video shop myself in about 5 years at least :s

Well I was just putting on The Wiggles for my daughter, we use our xbox 360 as a dvd player.

Anyway, I was curious to this Microsoft update so I quickly checked it out.

I noticed Harry Potter: The Half Blood Prince was available and I thought that should show the quality of this streaming.

So I fired up the preview and it started within 5-10 seconds so it must have been streaming the preview. It streamed well, no interruptions and the quality was pretty good, I'm assuming it was the SD version (the SD and HD versions of the full movie are available).

It had a little bit of compression, you could notice it every now and then with the blocky colours that can happen.

Anyway when I was quiting out I noticed that the movie was actually 480 Microsoft points for the HD version, and 420 for the SD.
That is roughly $8 at the current rate for 1000 Microsoft points.

The OP was detailing 240 Microsoft points, why is it double?

O, and my bandwidth was hammered a bit, not sure how much as I had downloaded a bit of L4D2 just before it.

It is heaps cheaper to rent the DVD and doesn't hammer my bandwidth. Microsoft will have to do deals with our ISP's to make them un-metered if they want it to work here in Aus.