Microsoft reached an agreement with Disney-ABC to start renting movies by using the Xbox Live, obviously it is a rent-online kind of thing that has its advantages and disadvantages:
Negative points
- their “Xbox Live Video Marketplace” rental model: Users can only watch movies they’ve rented for 14 days after downloading them or 24 hours from starting to view them.
- you can only watch the videos on the Xbox, so forget about the idea to use a computer/mac or any other kind of portable device.
Positive points
The neutral point goes for the price, which uses MP (Microsoft Points) as the currency. High definition movies are priced at 480 MPs, while standard definition go for 230MPs. Since a 1600 MP card costs $20, that means that each HD movie rental costs about $6 USD. Is it a good price?
via Coolest Gadgets
I can’t decide if these are a good price or not.
On one hand, having to buy Microsoft Points is annoying as all hell, and makes you spend more money than the actual price of a movie.
On the other hand, a 5 day rental at the video stores where I live (which seems to be what all of them are doing) is running $5 bucks, and you have to remember to take that back in a week.
So, looking at it from that point of view, $6 for 14 days ain’t bad.
The price can even be cheaper if you go for a standard definition (instead of HD) classic movie, it costs 240 MPs which corresponds to $3.
well, $15-20 for the actual dvd and then i can rip it to my home theatre pc and stream to my xbox as often as i like (or more realistically just play it from the pc) – anyone with kids will know they watch movies MANY times over so why would i spend $6 for only 14 days?