HD Movies

So I watched 2 HD movies this weekend, both involving the Wachowski brothers.

The 1st one is my all time favorite movie: The Matrix
Followed by another awesome movie: V for Vendetta

I’m part of the Xbox 360 beta program where we get to test new things before they’re push down onto everyone and in a week or two, they’re about to unveil their TV and movie downloads in the marketplace. For more information, please read about it at Movies and TV on Your Xbox!

To celebrate its first birthday on November 22, Xbox 360™ becomes the first and only gaming console to provide HD and standard-definition TV shows and movies direct to you.

After an intense game of Gears of War®, turn on Peter Jackson’s King Kong on HD DVD, play PAC-MAN on Xbox Live® Arcade, or even watch an episode of CSI: Miami that you downloaded earlier.

Xbox Live Marketplace is the place to download your favorite movies and TV, and remember to check back on Xbox.com to see what’s new!

Most TV shows come with both SD and HD version. SD costs 240 points and HD costs 320 points. That translates to about $3 and $4 respectively. $4 for an HD version vs $2 on iTMS for a 320×240 version. I’d definitely go for the extra resolution and pay the extra $2. Or I could *cough* *cough*. Anyway, the biggest problem right now is the small hard drive. With only 20gigs and a movie like V for Vendetta being 6GB, it’s obviously not enough. The initial line up isn’t bad either, though it’s far from being great. Unfortunately, movies could only rented at the moment. You must watch within 14 days and once you start playing the movie, you have 24 hours to complete or rewatch as many as possible. It’d be nice if I could keep an HD version of these great movies.

The servers aren’t extremely fast, though I guess 6GB in a few hours is reasonable, considering I’ve also been downloading on my main computer. I’ve also download a couple episodes of Numb3rs as Liam has recommended that series to me, so I guess I can check this series out while testing this new marketplace.

The picture quality is amazing. I can’t even describe how pretty they were. I was mesmerized by the beauty. I’ve started to dislike the quality of DVDs as I’ve been spoiled by HDTV episodes and now HD movies. Even many animes nowadays come in HD resolution. I’m thinking of buying one of those HD-DVD drives that was just released for the Xbox 360 and then I remember, I don’t have an HDTV yet. Been eyeing a few, but it still seems rather expensive. The cost is between $2000-$2500 for a 56″ – 62″ DLP rear projection TV. My minimum requirement is that it supports 1080p.

Oh well, maybe it’ll be a Christmas present for myself. Maybe a deal will pop up around Black Friday (god forbid that I’ll actually go shopping on Black Friday this year). It’s what I decided to get for myself with my bonus money this year, which has been just sitting around accumulating interest at 5.05% at HSBCDirect. Speaking of which, Krrk told me about E-LOAN awhile back and they’re doing 5.50% savings. However, the minimum they need is $5000 (which I do have), but not enough that I wouldn’t pull from this. Plus HSBC has been treating me well and not like how INGDirect screwed their current customers in favor of new customers.