I can't be certain, but how Xbox Fitness seemed to function was it streamed the video content from online whenever you "played" an exercise workout. I say this based on how at certain times trying to do a workout would result in errors. If Xbox Fitness was sold on disc, the only part it would have contained was the base software player and none of the workouts. Having a physical disc in this case would not have been any different.
If you two want to discuss larger overall DRM issues between other title please take it to another thread (I'm fairly certain they already exist).
Actually, you had the option to download the videos rather than to just stream them. Although this was a fairly (1 year??) recent change.
Clearly, there is something going on here in terms of licensing between MS and the content suppliers, but I really can't work out exactly what it is. Sure, Beachbody has a streaming service that is coming to XB1 but I don't believe it will be incorporating Kinect, it will be no different than their other streaming video content.
For some reason, it appears that MS was charging the content suppliers to remain in the "Xbox Fitness App/channel/whatever", I think they balked and said they'd just supply streaming video for free (to them, not us) just like any other app. Maybe this is because MS was actually the one that took their video content and integrated it with Kinect so MS wanted a cut?
I guess we should have seen this back when they made Xbox Fitness no longer require Kinect to use. I've never tried using it without Kinect. To me, if it isn't tracking your movements to tell you if you're doing it right and if it isn't keep track of heartrate, etc.. then it's no different than just watching a free Youtube video.
Anybody know if there's a program that allows you to use Kinect as a mirror even? So you could stream content that is not integrated into kinect, but snap a "mirror" Kinect video so you can at least see how your movements are doing? Even if the software isn't comparing your movements to optimal, at least you could visually see if what you were doing was close. As I said, this solution is no better than a mirror. But who has 50-80 inch mirrors next to TV's that they work out in front of?
