The quality of Netflix movies streamed from my 360 is noticeably better than those streamed from my Panasonic blu-ray player. That's why I prefer the 360.
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I just bought a $50 Toshiba BDX2150 Blu-ray player which has a built-in ethernet jack. The player has built-in support for Netflix, CinemaNow, YouTube, VUDU, Pandora, Blockbuster, Picasa. This past weekend I used the player's Nefllix app to test the quality of HD movie streaming on a 37" 1080p LCD and it looked surprisingly good...not Blu-ray good but comparable to some of the better DirectTV HD channels.
For the same price I could've bought a $50 streaming box like this SONY but it doesn't play Blu-ray discs.
http://store.sony.com/webapp/wcs/st...51&storeId=10151&langId=-1&partNumber=SMPN100
For the same price I could've bought a $50 streaming box like this SONY but it doesn't play Blu-ray discs.
http://store.sony.com/webapp/wcs/st...51&storeId=10151&langId=-1&partNumber=SMPN100
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Silent_Buddha
Legend
What about the person that bought a 1080p HDTV 5 years ago and are expecting it to last them 10-15 years?
Heck even expensive HDTV's from 2 years ago sometimes have rather anemic internet support. Is a new 1000 USD+ HDTV more attractive than a sub 200 USD Xbox whatever?
I finally just got a new LG 55" LED based HDTV (found someone to buy my old 46" CFL LCD TV + old HTPC otherwise I'd be waiting another 5 years before buying a new TV). And while LG has a decent array of internet connectivity apps it's still nowhere near as good or as polished as what's available on the X360. Although the "Magic Wand" that comes with it is fairly interesting.
I'd say it's far easier to convince people to buy a device that is under 200 USD than to replace a TV that they got in the last 2-5 years for 1000+ USD. And if they have more than 1 TV in the house, that decision gets even easier to make. Of course, for someone like me, that's all moot. I've got a HTPC that blows all of that away. Well except for the Kinect support on X360. Impossible to beat that.
Regards,
SB
RancidLunchmeat
Veteran
I was under the impression that only the 360 had netflix HD? Is that no longer the case, or was that just in regards to the PS3 and Wii?
I know my WD Live box is HD capable (it will stream from my local network) but the Netflix app doesn't stream HD.
I know my WD Live box is HD capable (it will stream from my local network) but the Netflix app doesn't stream HD.
But how does that affect MS's plans to produce a set-top box (if they ahve such plans)? Are you suggesting they consider making a $99 XBox box that plays games and enables internet content, look at TVs coming with these features as standard, and decide it's not worth bothering with because in 8-10 years time everyone will own a TV with it all integrated?Unless internet-enabled TVs are selling by the truckload, there's still a huge, untapped market for enabling internet content on existing TVs.
I guess the market is wide open. I don't know how many Roku ship or what kind of volumes the most popular DVD/Blu-Ray players see.
A couple of years ago, these Internet features were options on TVs and now they seem to be included. There is certainly a large installed base of TVs which could use set top boxes but you don't get the sense that any one player is making a ton of money selling these boxes or seeing greater sales of their disc player because it streams Netflix.
If MS sees a business opportunity, more power to them.
HD resolution Neflix streaming was never an Xbox exclusive function. I believe it's been available for computers for awhile.
Why wouldn't people be interested in a Roku that plays Xbox games? It has all the benefits of not having to replace your existing HDTV with much higher quality games as a bonus. The real barrier to acceptance will be the requirement of paying for Xbox Live to use other services. I bought a Roku specifically so I could stop paying for a gold membership.
We're not talking about MS going into making dumb set-top boxes and competing with the Chinese no-brand devices. There's little money to be made there. But by including media functionality, MS add important value to their device. If MS were to just release a console with no media functions, people are going to have to make a choice between it, a set-top box, both at added cost and more boxes in the living room, or a rival device that does everything (Sony or Apple, say). Those with internet TVs, maybe 5% now and maybe 25-35% in 5 years, may be happy to just get a games console that can do nothing else, but they are far too small a market to aim for.
It's basically essential to support media functions. Thankfully it's also cheap, adding next to nothing to the console cost, so it basically comes free. It doesn't detract anything from the game experience, and can even augment it when you can multitask (custom playlists, or jump to a browser in game).
SedentaryJourney
Regular
It'd be sad if they didn't matter to PC the market to some degree, but even if the lack of either doesn't materially impact sales it still results in a qualitatively lesser experience.
The PS3 netflix is HD. I've never used the Wii version but I doubt it can output an HD signal.
The technology and user-base already exist yet PS360 are relatively lousy media players when they should be leaders in the field. I'm not sure what the reasons are, but neither offer the openness of the PC nor the features of dedicated media players. Microsoft seems interested in pushing media services but are clawing back support for 1080p user content. It'll be interesting to see if MS can even compete well in this field.
new rumor @ VG247
http://www.vg247.com/2012/04/02/xbox-720-detailed-blu-ray-inside-always-on-netcon-required/
it mentions dual gpu setup in non-traditonal sense [not crossfire/sli]
http://www.vg247.com/2012/04/02/xbox-720-detailed-blu-ray-inside-always-on-netcon-required/
it mentions dual gpu setup in non-traditonal sense [not crossfire/sli]
That sounds a lot like either two SoC working together or an APU + gpu in dual graphic mode.
We hear again a six CPU set-up, it somehow sound better that 8 that would most likely be pretty weak CPU core but claim like one CPU for the the OS and another one for Kinect would imply terribly weak CPU or a massive jump in requirement for those two tasks.
Overall sounds weird like pretty everything we heard so far on Durango, not that much faith can be put to such statements.
It does sound like an APU+Discreet GPU. 6 cores again, but no information on the architecture (e.g. if it is a newer Power that could be 24 threads). A next gen Kinect running at a higher resolution and faster refresh rate WILL need more processing power. And one of my big beefs this gen is the slowness of the dash so dedicate more resources and features to the dash/OS (e.g. imagine every game having recording and social elements embedded) could be interesting but take a lot of CPU power.
Yeah. A Core for OS and another for Kinect sounds good to me. Assuming a much more multitasking OS, it wants to have plenty of resources available just in case without interrupting the game. A smooth experience adds 'slickness' to the overall feel of the platform. And something like Kinect can consume as many CPU cycles as you want to throw at it. Even a simple camera can eat loads of processing if you do complex image analysis and filtering. 6 cores makes sense to me.
So they are going to dedicate an entire core to an optional accessory that a lot of people don't even wan't...
Also, there are some rumours of a constant net connection being required. Like what, you won't be able to play Fallout 4 if Comcast has an internet outage or whatever? Sounds retarded.
Are the days of the classic game console over? Is it now just about tying you into as many constantly-connected services as possible?
I hate the socialization of society. I just want to live in my house in the middle of nowhere and play Fallout 4 ffs...
Also, there are some rumours of a constant net connection being required. Like what, you won't be able to play Fallout 4 if Comcast has an internet outage or whatever? Sounds retarded.
Are the days of the classic game console over? Is it now just about tying you into as many constantly-connected services as possible?
I hate the socialization of society. I just want to live in my house in the middle of nowhere and play Fallout 4 ffs...
That sounds like bs especially as it seems that for kinect the heavy lifting is already done by the gpu .
Potentially. The same rumour has Kinect as standard. It's not different in principle to dedicating a core to the OS, to enable background multiasking of features lots of people don't want, but also lots of other people do. If Kinect 2 is providing an always on OS interface, where in the middle of the game you can say, "Kinect, Facebook" and jump out of your game into FB, then Kinect has to be constantly observing who's playing to not respond to instructions from someone else.
Or if we put it another way, if there was a CPU in Kinect 2 for the purpose, I doubt you'd be complaining; a dedicated chip inside the peripheral doesn't take away from the rest of the machine. Well, the only difference between that and a dedicated core on the main CPU is where the silicon is positioned. MS still have to budget for a total silicon budget and cost. Now if Kinect is optional then it makes more sense for those not interested in Kinect to move the chip and cost into the peripheral, but then MS may want to hide the cost of Kinect. Instead of paying for an expensive peripheral with dedicated CPU, it'd be a little cheaper as that part of the system was paid for up front.
It certainly makes sense - as a rumour. No point anyone getting their knickers in a twist yet over what's in these boxes, because we don't yet know.
Yeah, the implication is that Kinect will be a lot more integrated into every function of the system.
Hmm, i wonder what way Sony goes if that is the case. 6 cores, 1/3 dedicated to OS and Kinect, of which Kinect is only usefull for the more family oriented games, which again looks at price. That would indicate a pretty cheap launch price.
The bolded is why I take issue with Kinect being standard. As an option, it wouldn't effect the overall BOM IMO since they could just charge extra for the SKU bundled with the sensor. This is why making kinect standard is a wrong move IMO. They put limitations on how they can price the system over the course of the generation and the overall BOM of the complete package.
Even if the CPU was in kinect 2, instead of the console, I would still complain since we would never know if that effected the amount of cores MS was willing to invest into the core platform.
Reserving an entire core for the OS is overkill IMO, but reserving yet another core for Kinect is just stupid. It should be optional, for developers that don't wish to use kinect, they have that extra core. Otherwise it would just sit there idle, unless MS believes every single game next gen will use the sensor.
Their investment into whatever hardware would go further if they allowed developers choose how they wish to use the components.
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