12/28/2008 Xbox 360 Adventures Num. 1: Netflix

post from 8bitrocket.com Blog on 12 January 2009 06:11:06 PM. © 8bitrocket.com Blog

New Mid-Core Gamer Blog Entry :

A few months ago I wrote a prediction that the Xbox 360 would soon die an untimely death. Since then the machine has systematically proved me wrong. It has outsold the PS3, and has done very well against the Wii. Microsoft has cut the price and added features that have made their magic box look more an more attractive. However, a few weeks back they announced one feature that made the Xbox a necessary product for me: Netflix streaming. I've been waiting for an easy way to chuck my DVD collection and access movies and TV programs from an online collection for years now. The on-demand portion of FIOS is just OK, but does not include enough content to really be interesting. iTunes charges far too much for old TV programs and movies, and even though you 'own' them, you really don't. You can't transfer them, if you lose them you can't re-download them. It's all very user-unfriendly. However, Netflix streaming is quite different. You have a library of 12,000 or so movies and DVDs at your fingertips, all you have to do is select them and start viewing on your PC. However, viewing on a PC/Mac sucks. The holy grail is to be able to select from a huge library and watch them on my HD plasma TV and Bose speaker set-up.

The Xbox 360 now has this feature, and it is awesome.