... is sort of here. I downloaded the "New Xbox Experience" this morning and I'm damned impressed. Now, I haven't been galavanting around looking at everything yet. No, the part I'm impressed with is the new Netflix integration. Simply put: I'm sold on the future of streaming video. Putting HD (and even SD) films and television shows into my instant queue is slicker and easier than I could have imagined. Plus, it's practically instant when putting items in the queue on the computer and those items showing up on my 360.
The quality for SD content seems to vary a bit. Most of it seems sub-DVD quality though. I mean, that's about what I expected. And that's not bad for a two week free trial. The HD content, however, seems to be on par with over-the-air broadcasts, which is good. (Netflix does throttle the quality back if you don't have adequate bandwidth though. Even on some of the lower settings when I had bittorrent running, the quality was still very good, however.) Having access to both seasons of 30 Rock and all four seasons of the American Office at my beck and call makes me feel warm and fuzzy. This is how people's video libraries should be in the future. We need less clutter. Instead, what we need is more hard drive space and faster internet connections.
While this is hardly revolutionary for some of you (or even most of you, given the "niche-ness" of this site), the ease of integration between Netflix and the 360 has convinced me utterly that wasting shelf space on physical discs is going to go the way of the dodo in about 5 years. Granted, for the films I really love, I wouldn't be averse to buying a copy on Blu-ray or keeping some legacy DVDs and whatnot that will never appear on Netflix (instructional guitar material comes to mind), but for most everything else, I need to just rent or stream it from Netflix.
The only thing that needs improvement is the selection of streaming HD content. Right now, there's only six pages of material and hardly any of it is stellar. Indeed, the only notable items I could find where the Office, 30 Rock, and the King of Kong (which, if you haven't seen it yet, is an absolute must!). I'd love to have more streaming television shows and more notable movies available. That would make Hulu and bittorrent pretty much obsolete for me then.
The other big feature that comes with the New Xbox Experience is the ability to install games to your hard drives. If you've got a somewhat older Xbox 360 like me, then this is crucial for two reasons. One is that doing this shortens load times by as much as twenty seconds for some games (Oddly, Halo 3 seems to be the only game that's load times got worse). The Orange Box benefits greatly from this and now I don't dread loading it up as much and waiting for the menu screen to switch to another game.
The second reason that this is important is that that loud fucking disc drive isn't spinning while you're playing! How many late night sessions have you had where you just realized how amazingly loud your 360 is? Now the only thing you're going to hear is the fan. And noise-wise, I'd say it's almost on par with my PlayStation 3 now. Rejoice!
So now that I'm off of work, I'm going to tool around with the "NXE" some more before I start watching the second season of Lost. (Yes, I've been ashamed to pick it up for so long for fear of people saying that it starts to suck like Heroes supposedly did.)
Update: I'm watching the SD version of Zach Galifianakis: Live at the Purple Onion and the quality is superb. I was saying that the streaming SD quality seemed to vary. The British Office didn't look too hot and the streaming version of Ratatouille was definitely inferior to the DVD, but ZG: LATPO looks just as good if not better than DVD quality. It's also one of the funniest stand up movies I've seen in a while. The Comedians of Comedy: The Movie is like comfort food to me and this is proving to be another good one.
"When you look like I do, it's hard to get a table for one at Chuck E. Cheese."
The quality for SD content seems to vary a bit. Most of it seems sub-DVD quality though. I mean, that's about what I expected. And that's not bad for a two week free trial. The HD content, however, seems to be on par with over-the-air broadcasts, which is good. (Netflix does throttle the quality back if you don't have adequate bandwidth though. Even on some of the lower settings when I had bittorrent running, the quality was still very good, however.) Having access to both seasons of 30 Rock and all four seasons of the American Office at my beck and call makes me feel warm and fuzzy. This is how people's video libraries should be in the future. We need less clutter. Instead, what we need is more hard drive space and faster internet connections.
While this is hardly revolutionary for some of you (or even most of you, given the "niche-ness" of this site), the ease of integration between Netflix and the 360 has convinced me utterly that wasting shelf space on physical discs is going to go the way of the dodo in about 5 years. Granted, for the films I really love, I wouldn't be averse to buying a copy on Blu-ray or keeping some legacy DVDs and whatnot that will never appear on Netflix (instructional guitar material comes to mind), but for most everything else, I need to just rent or stream it from Netflix.
The only thing that needs improvement is the selection of streaming HD content. Right now, there's only six pages of material and hardly any of it is stellar. Indeed, the only notable items I could find where the Office, 30 Rock, and the King of Kong (which, if you haven't seen it yet, is an absolute must!). I'd love to have more streaming television shows and more notable movies available. That would make Hulu and bittorrent pretty much obsolete for me then.
The other big feature that comes with the New Xbox Experience is the ability to install games to your hard drives. If you've got a somewhat older Xbox 360 like me, then this is crucial for two reasons. One is that doing this shortens load times by as much as twenty seconds for some games (Oddly, Halo 3 seems to be the only game that's load times got worse). The Orange Box benefits greatly from this and now I don't dread loading it up as much and waiting for the menu screen to switch to another game.
The second reason that this is important is that that loud fucking disc drive isn't spinning while you're playing! How many late night sessions have you had where you just realized how amazingly loud your 360 is? Now the only thing you're going to hear is the fan. And noise-wise, I'd say it's almost on par with my PlayStation 3 now. Rejoice!
So now that I'm off of work, I'm going to tool around with the "NXE" some more before I start watching the second season of Lost. (Yes, I've been ashamed to pick it up for so long for fear of people saying that it starts to suck like Heroes supposedly did.)
Update: I'm watching the SD version of Zach Galifianakis: Live at the Purple Onion and the quality is superb. I was saying that the streaming SD quality seemed to vary. The British Office didn't look too hot and the streaming version of Ratatouille was definitely inferior to the DVD, but ZG: LATPO looks just as good if not better than DVD quality. It's also one of the funniest stand up movies I've seen in a while. The Comedians of Comedy: The Movie is like comfort food to me and this is proving to be another good one.
"When you look like I do, it's hard to get a table for one at Chuck E. Cheese."
3 comments:
this sounds amazing, this whole post.
this sounds amazing, this whole post.
ecstasy makes me a better dancer.
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