Update: Steve Swasey, VP of Corporate Communications at Netflix, confirmed to GameCyte earlier this evening that Xbox 360 does indeed have a limited exclusive on Netflix HD streams. When asked whether this period of exclusivity was a matter of days, months, what have you, Swasey told us “not just days.”
However, the VP warned that compared to the 12,000-piece-strong Netflix library, the initial Xbox 360 offering of only 300 HD movies was a “modest offering,” would be “really underwhelming,” and would further require some serious bandwidth to stream. Swasey said that users would need a 5-8 Mbps connection to stream HD video. While uncertain whether the program would require a hard drive, he said that the HD service would equire no download and need no storage space.
Original article:
Say what you will, but in my humble opinion, one of the biggest pieces of news out of E3 2008 was neither software release nor hardware price cut — but rather Microsoft’s announcement that the New Xbox Experience would include Netflix video streaming, free of charge. Considering that the Roku, a set-top box dedicated to that very same task, costs $100… well, as Microsoft marketers would no doubt say, the Xbox 360’s value proposition just went way up.
But there’s more. Today, Engadget has discovered that when the New Xbox Experience launches on November 19th, the Xbox 360 will be the very first Netflix HD streamer.
They don’t provide a whole heck of a lot of information:
Yes friends, when the all new dashboard hits on November 19th, with it will come HD Netflix streaming for (US-based, presumably) Xbox Live Gold members. You should know that this is only a “soft launch” with about 300 titles available for now, and the litany of details you’re surely craving simply aren’t available at present time.
…but they did attach the helpful image at right.
Though a CNET News report issued this morning contradicts the Engadget story, saying that “when it premieres with the New Xbox Experience… the Roku, LG, and Samsung boxes will all be able to stream these HD movies, in addition to the Xbox 360,” a Microsoft representative told GameCyte that on November 19th, the Xbox 360 will be Netflix’s one and only.
Netflix was unavailable for comment by time of publication.
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