By: Brian Crecente

The Xbox 360 is getting into the video rental and sales business.

Starting on Nov. 22, the one-year anniversary of the next-gen console, Xbox 360 owners will be able to buy high-definition televisions shows or rent high-definition movies via a download through the Xbox Live Marketplace.

In a recent interview, Scott Henson, director of platform strategy for the Xbox 360 and Games for Windows, told me that the plan is to have more than 1,000 hours of 720p high-def movies and shows available by the end of the year.

The new, digitally distributed content will be available within the Marketplace blade in a new section called Media and Home Entertainment.

The service will allow users to download the television shows to their 360's hard drive for a "competitive price" or rent high-def movies. The television shows will not, yet at least, work with Microsoft's Zune player nor will it be transferable to other devices. Though, Henson said that there is no limit on the number of times a show can be downloaded by the owner once he or she purchases it.

Movies, once downloaded, can stay on a hard drive for up to two weeks before being viewed, he said. Once the renter starts to watch the movie, it will become locked after 24 hours, allowing the renter to view them as many times as they want within that period.

Once the show is locked, it's up to the user to manually delete the movie, Henson said.

Microsoft has signed distribution deals with Warner Bros, CBS, Turner, Paramount and MTV, which will give the service more than 1,000 hours of downloadable content by the end of the year.

The shows and movies that will hit the service include: V is for Vendetta, CSI, Survivor, remastered versions of the original Star Trek, Robot Chicken, Aqua Teen Hunger Force, NASCAR, UFC, Nacho Libre, South Park, Chapell Show, Real World, Pimp My Ride, Avatar, SpongeBob SquarePants, Surreal Life and Hogan Knows Best.

"That's a good start," Henson said, adding that shows will be available in both regular and high-definition formats. "Some of these things I'm not going to watch in high-def, like South Park, so I have the choice between the two."

Henson said that prices have not been released yet, but that it would be competitive with like services.

The movies and television shows will be organized in several different ways in the new area, Henson said.

Within the television area you will be able to browse shows by network, by air date or by date it hit the service, for instance. Each show will include a description and video preview.

Henson said the service will also make use of the active download abilities of the X box 360, which allow you to download something while playing a game.

If you're anxious to start watching your movie or show, the service also uses a form of intelligent streaming which allows you to start watching before the download is complete but does so in a way that removes the possibility of lag.

While there isn't set file size for movies or television shows, Henson did give me some examples of how much space a movie or television show could take up on your console's hard drive.

The 101 minute Cradle to the Grave, for instance takes up one gig when downloaded in standard mode and 4.5 gigs when downloaded in high def.. He said that works out to about one gig for every 22 minutes of high-def video. So an hour-long television show (without commercials) will take up about two gigs of your hard drive's space.

While the fall update for the dashboard did add the ability to plug a Zune into a 360 and stream all of the content to the television, it doesn't let you transfer data the other way.

When I questioned Microsoft's decision not to initially include that, seemingly important functionality, Henson warned not to rule it out in the future.

"Currently that is not a scenario you can do," he said of transferring purchased TV shows to the Zune from the 360. " We don't support it yet."

"We are wickedly focused on the console right now and there is a lot of work going into getting that up."

With television show purchases and movie rentals possibly sucking up so much of the 360's harddrive, I asked Henson if there was a possibility of a new, larger hard drive coming to the console in the near future.

""We're always thinking about what people are going to do with the Xbox 360 someday," he said. "But what matters, is at the end of the day what consumers do with this. If people are clamoring for that and that's something they want that's something we will look at."

While I think this is a wonderful service, it really needs to be one that supports portable players. The ability to download and watch television shows on your television doesn't seem like it would be filling a huge need. And just about anyone with satellite or cable TV can already rent movies on demand. It's the portability of media content that could really make this a killer app.

It will be interesting to see what Sony's response to this is. They have the digital content, the distribution network and the console and portable player, they just need to get them all to work together.

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