Xbox 360 to Get HD Netflix Streaming First

Engadget HD reports that the Xbox 360 will be the first to offer HD Netflix movie streaming, with 300 titles.

It's something you can't get on the Roku. Nor on LG's BD300. Nor on Samsung's P2500 / P2550 Blu-ray players. Nor through Netflix's own "Watch Instantly" portal. It's high-def Netflix streaming, and it's coming first to Microsoft's Xbox 360. Yes friends, when the all new dashboard hits on November 19th, with it will come HD Netflix streaming for Xbox Live Gold members. You should know that this is only a "soft launch" with about 300 titles available for now, and the litany of details you're surely craving simply aren't available at present time.

Thanks to Sean for sending this in.

Comments

[hueristix]

Hot Damn, They just might finally get me to join that gold BS. So why is it only possible on XBOX?

[Brian]

Noooooooo... I got the PS3 for the bluray. Oh well... that means they are mobving in the right direction. Maybe Playon will support HD once they start streaming HD on their site (soon... I hope!)

[MCW]

It is not ONLY possible on 360. That's a straight up lie. I would expect no less from crap like Engadget.

[Steve]

"It is not ONLY possible on 360. That's a straight up lie."

It doesn't say its ONLY possible on a XBox 360, it just says HD Netflix movie streaming will be available FIRST on the Xbox 360. Upset that you won't be the first to get it on that Roku box you bought??

It seems pretty crummy that Netflix wouldn't first offer this to those who purchased the Roku box. We are the dedicated customers who bought a unit that is dedicated solely to NetFlix.

[John Kimble]

Well considering I know they have been streaming HD titles for some time now this isn't news, the bitrate toggler has been in on this site for awhile and if you notice like on Heroes Season 1 there are higher bitrates which are all HD content. So its been being tested now for over a few months so its already been available, so I would think this article is complete rubbish, because another issue with the launch for Microsoft is that there have already been titles and Im pretty sure Netflix is way to backed up encoding films now for there new silverlight player to even begin doing encoding on HD titles for silverlight, the content is all the same, XBOX wont be pulling from different servers they will get the same content as everyone else so if 360 gets it everyone does so this article seems to have absolutely no merit.

[kevin]

Does anyone know how exactly this "streaming" will work? The word makes it sound like you just sit down, let it buffer up for a few seconds, and off you go. Ha. I have a 300kbps DSL, the best I can get where I live, and "streaming" to my PC is unusable. It has to buffer for more than an hour, at which point it just suddenly starts playing even though I'm probably not in the room anymore. Then if I try to back up, it has to start the process all over again. Like I said, unusable.

Moreover anything I download to my xbox is profoundly slower than this; I think its wireless gadget probably sucks really bad. So I'm really dubious about how this netflix-on-xbox thing is going to work out in practice, even before you add in HD to the mix.

[CopaceticOpus]

As a PS3 owner, I must admit I'm jealous. However, I'm still glad I have the ability to rent Blu-Ray movies. They might call this streaming "HD", but it's just not going to be close to the quality of Blu-Ray.

[Jargon13]

Kevin, you don't have the minimum recommended requirements for Netflix streaming, so you're not going to get a good idea how it works. The website says, "For the best experience, we recommend: An active broadband Internet connection of at least 1.5 Mbps."

[Steve]

"The word makes it sound like you just sit down, let it buffer up for a few seconds, and off you go."

Yes, actually, that is EXACTLY how it works. With only a 300kbps DSL connection, how can you realistically expect to stream video to any device that you have??

[JohnG]

According to CNET, all boxes including Roku will be HD. They point out that the Engadget article is incorrect.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13515_3-10078091-26.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-5

[Paul]

I really like the approach Netflix is taking to adapt to digital delivery, but it's absolutely infuriating that I need to have an XBL Gold account to use this.

I wouldn't mind paying Netflix an extra buck or two a month for the service, but $50/year to MS just to be able to stream directly to a device is absurd.

MS doesn't require you to have a gold account to rent movies from them.

[Steve]

I suspect it's coming to Xbox first because you have storage space there for a lot of buffering. My Roku doesn't have a USB port on it for me to give it buffer space, not sure how much internal storage it has. Fortunately my ISP just upgraded my service to 8Mbps so I can prolly get close to compressed HD w/o much buffering space needed.

[shetaan819]

Anyone know if the HD stream will support Dolby Digital 5.1 - and I mean is the source actually going to be 5.1 ??!

If that's the case, there really will be no need for DVD (although extras every once in a while is nice I suppose)...!

[John Kimble]

THe ROKU device will have enough space especially now that they are using silverlight the files are going to be smaller to make it easier for buffering, the avaialble space on the ROKU for buffering is listed in there blog somewhere I think its actually only 256MB. Unfortunatley I can't respond to the audio connection but with using Silverlight there will be a whole lot more oppurtunities as you can select and get different audio qualities and sources like 64/128/192, so this means they will also be able to use dubbed tracks as well and include original source audio for foriegn titles as well as dubbed audio. Also the commentor who mentioned his 300 KBps connection should be better supported as the new miimum req. for downloading should drop as the files get smaller the connection speed for them should also drop. As far as using the 360 service the req. come from microsoft and NEtflix is not going to have anything to do with that.

[Rob Cannon]

Does anyone know where a list of the HD titles can be found?

[Josh]

Ha!I have the roku player and a 360 with a gold account, and both are on 1080i hd tvs!!!!cant wait!!!

[Jay]

@Rob Cannon if you want to "test out" the HD streaming, Heroes Season 3 is presented in HD. It looks very sharp. I'm enjoying it on the XBox with its software update.