Tuesday, July 15, 2008

Netflix to Make Videos Available to the Microsoft Xbox 360

Netflix will make a library of more than 10 thousand movies and TV episodes available when it launches on Xbox Live toward the end of 2008. This is an extension of the Netflix Live service that provides the ability to watch videos on a PC today. The Xbox Live service will provide the ability to watch the Netflix videos on TVs.

This is an interesting announcement because it brings over the top Internet TV to the TV set rather than the PC. I think that this is where commercial video content needs to go to really capture a significance audience.

The key will be the quality of experience. It is likely that most U.S. broadband users will get a good SD experience on their TV but will not be able to stream HD. This will show up the bandwidth limitations of most U.S. broadband services.

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