Bugs Plague New Xbox 360 Video Service

eldavojohn writes "The BBC is running a story on problems with the Xbox 360's HD video service that went live a few days ago. I have wondered quite a bit how Microsoft runs the proxy caches for this service and how they are ensuring that their end consumers are not creating high amounts of internet traffic while downloading HD video." From the article: "Gamers can buy TV programmes but the movies are rented and are automatically deleted from the console's hard drive after a fixed period. 'We've made progress over the past 24 hours, and the team is dedicated to fixing the issues and continues to work as fast as they can around the clock to get the service running as seamlessly as you have come to expect,' wrote Mr Hryb, who is Xbox Live's director of programming, on his Major Nelson Xbox blog.

360 is game system 1st, video download service 2nd

[ConfusedSelfHating]

There will be bugs for a while. Microsoft will attempt to iron out those bugs. Microsoft has the advantage that this is an added feature. People buy the Xbox 360 as a game system, it won't be a big deal if the video download service takes a while to get up and running. Of course people who have paid for downloads that haven't worked will be pissed.

Re:arg

[Thansal]

Meh, we expect this type of thing by now, and it does not matter on the company. I expect that they will have it working in the next couple of days.

Speaking of gettign stuff workign in the next couple of days, can any one report on how the Wii online stuff is going? is it working now?

Why have a 'Fixed Period'?

[HappySqurriel]

Why do they even have a fixed period of time before a movie is deleted from a person's hard-drive?

The XBox 360's hard-drive is 20GBs which (should) allow for (about) 20 to 40 SD movies or 5 to 10 HD movies; eventually they will have to 'return' the movie (that is delete it) or they will run out of hard-drive space. Currently most rental places have eliminated late fees (with a small restocking fee after a week), and online services have no time limitations, so why would I pay the same ammount and be put in a far more limited system?

Don't Bash Microsoft

[SilentOneNCW]

This doesn't look to be a problem due to poor engineering. This merely looks like Microsoft has underestimated the popularity of it's service. If anything, it is an indicator of Microsoft's continuing success in this console war, even as the PS3 and the Wii launch.

Re:Bandwidth and Hard Disk

[cgenman]

There is a clear quality difference between recorded HDTV and broadcast HDTV. I agree with your assessment: broadcast HDTV is of so low quality as to be unnoticable. But having worked with HDTV's for about a year now, the low-rez recorded stuff is just terribly noticable, especially on the size of TV's where HDTV matters.

The lack of HDTV content is just a scanning issue. Take the negative, run it under a scanner, re-balance the colors, done. It's no more difficult to create HDTV content from a print negative than to create regular content. Likewise, the Xbox 360 tends to be very HDTV-centric... at one point I believe it was 50% of all 360 purchasers buying a HDTV at the same time. So you have the installed base congealing there, if nowhere else.

480p, BTW, while not actually considered high-def is still comparitively rare. 480i would be a fairer comparison.

Now, the one thing you don't mention is compression artifacts. 360 download videos are utterly, utterly compressed with WMV. I haven't had a chance to check out the high-rez compression (haven't downloaded anything at work), but the normal rez stuff is about what you would expect from a mid-grade torrent rip. Black gradients exhibit stepping, there is some blur around sharp edges. It looks good for mid-color range content like Chinatown, but it is bad for dark shows like Lost and completely dies on cartoons like Invader Zim.

As a side note, I'm planning a THX 1138 viewing party for when MS gets their servers together. "Hey, I'd like a movie. Go get me that movie. I'll see it later." It's not exactly video-on-demand, it's more like having a digital butler to run out and get what you want. Convienient.

Re:Wrong titles

[jonhorvath]

ISP should setup caching servers right on their network. They could then sell storage rights to content providers. This would be similar to how grocery stores sells self space for best visibility for their vendor's products. This would benefit all parties. It would lessen the load on the content provider's servers and network pipes. The ISP customer would get the fastest possible download speeds.