He said he planned initially to focus on genres, like comedy and horror, that appeal to the Xbox 360 audience, which is heavily concentrated from the ages of 14 to 34, and tends to be more male than female. The first shows are expected to be available to viewers by the fall.

Microsoft apologizes for any inconvenience and is investigating the matter in full. But since these problems remind me a lot of the US roll out of Video Marketplace, I'm guessing they won't be permanent.

Microsoft confirm problems with UK Video Marketplace [via n4g]

By: Brian Crecente

It's no great surprise that Microsoft has a new Xbox 360 model in the works, but today they made if official and also announced five new Video Marketplace partners.

The Xbox 360 Elite will come with a 120GB hard drive, an HDMI port, a HDMI cable, both component and composite cables, an audio adapter for use with HDMI and a black finish for the console, wireless controller and Xbox Live headset. It will not have, despite rumors to the contrary, the smaller 65 nanometer chips, built in IPTV support or a built-in HD-DVD drive.

While Microsoft declined to comment on specific launch numbers for the new model, they did say it would not be a limited edition run. The Elite is here to stay, as are the core and standard Xbox 360.

The Elite model will hit in North America on April 29 for $479.99 along with a new stand-alone 120 GB hard drive that will sell for a whopping $179.99. The hard drive will come with a transfer cable and software to move the content stored on a 20 GB hard drive to your new drive.

Microsoft will also begin selling black battery packs and play and charge kits for the same price as their white counter-parts.

While the Elite edition will also be selling around the world, Microsoft did not discuss the date or price for other regions.

"Today's games and entertainment enthusiast has an insatiable appetite for digital high-definition content," Peter Moore, corporate vice president for the Interactive Entertainment Business at Microsoft, said in a prepared statement. "Xbox 360 Elite's larger hard drive and premium accessories will allow our community to enjoy all that the next generation of entertainment has to offer."

Peter Dille, senior vice president of Marketing for Sony Computer Entertainment of America, was quick to point out that all of Sony's consoles offer an "elite" experience.

"The PlayStation 3 is the only elite gaming system on the market. Microsoft is trying to catch up to us at this point. Beyond the benefits of HDMI and a hard drive offered on every PS3 we make, we also provide game developers and consumers the huge capacity of Blu-ray disc, Wi-Fi, free online gameplay, wireless motion sensing controller and the power of Cell," said Peter Dille, senior vice president of marketing, Sony Computer Entertainment America. "Our strategy has always been to offer all our consumers a future-proof experience when they first purchase any PS3, rather than continually asking users to upgrade with expensive new add-ons and entire new SKUs."

Speaking with Albert Penello, director for global platform marketing for the Xbox 360, earlier today I asked him why, after months of saying that an HDMI output was unnecessary for high-def gaming, was Microsoft now releasing a console with the port.

It was, after all, just six months ago that Msoft's Shane Kim was calling 720p the "super sweet spot" for gaming.

"That's a good question," he said. "I think what's interesting is that we have proven the point. One of the reasons we talked about that at the beginning was we were competing with a bunch of empty promises. We said 1080p can be done through analog, the picture quality isn't any better on HDMI, and I think we proved that."

" I don't think (HDMI) is necessary, it's not necessary to give a high-def experience," he said. "The HDMI decision was partially something that we have been thinking about how we were going to introduce. And now that there are a lot of televisions that have HDMI, we felt the time was right."

But, Penello is quick to point out, the Elite really isn't about the HDMI out, the big news for the Elite is the larger hard drive.

"I wouldn't encourage a current owner to come out and buy the Elite," he said. "We are releasing the stand-alone 120 GB drive... that's really going to be the primary solution for those who want more storage."

Penello said that Microsoft is working on a way to allow those current Xbox 360 owners who do decide to buy an Elite to transfer their data from their old Xbox 360 to their new one. He added that Microsoft has no intention of discontinuing either of the current models, there will be, he stressed, three Xbox 360 SKUs in the marketplace.

"We still think the 20 gig model will be our volume driver, the one most customers will buy," he said.

The decision to create an Elite model for the 360 was spurred in part by the "explosive growth of marketplace," Penello said.

While Penello acknowledged that the hard drive limitations of the Xbox 360 is a hot topic on gaming forums, he said that Microsoft doesn't believe that's an issue faced by most typical gamers.

"From my standpoint a lot of people still have room on their 20GB hard drives and we are still going to optimize all of the content on marketplace around 20GB," he said.

Microsoft also announced deals with distribution deals with five new video Marketplace partners:

Warner Bros. Home Entertainment: They will be releasing its direct to video movies exclusively in high definition on Xbox LIVE simultaneous with their availability on DVD, starting with "Sublime" and later offering "Babylon 5: The Lost Tales."

A&E Network: "Dog the Bounty Hunter," "King of Cars," "Gene Simmons Family Jewels," "Driving Force" and "Criss Angel Mindfreak"

ADV Films: Top offerings from the #1 producer-distributor of Japanese animation ("anime") outside of Japan

National Geographic: The television series "Is It Real?" and "Taboo" as well as programs such as "21 Days to Baghdad" and "Air Force One"

New Line Cinema: "Snakes on a Plane," "Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning" and "Tenacious D in the Pick of Destiny," plus top titles including "Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me" and "Magnolia"

TotalVid: A broad action-sports offering including extreme skiing and snowboarding, skateboarding, motocross, surfing and mountain biking

Tons of new Video Marketplace content is now available on Xbox Live and Microsoft's Major Nelson has the full rundown. The following television shows and movies have been added, with a couple coming soon:

Skyland (Nicktoons) - Season 1
Wild World of Spike
An Inconvenient Truth
Lady in the Water (HD)
Beerfest (HD)
The Wicker Man (HD)
The Descent (HD)
American Haunting (HD)
See No Evil (HD)
The Blair Witch Project (HD)
Requiem for a Dream (HD)
Cecil B. Demented (HD)

World Trade Center (coming soon)
Barnyard (coming soon)

And, in an effort to get you hooked on Nickelodeon's Skyland, they're offering the first episode for free until midnight Monday, January 29th.

Hmm. What will it be? Skyland or Requiem for a Dream? Tough call. Both are high quality, but only one features heroin addicts living a hellish existence. Michael McWhertor

For those of you using multiple Xbox Live accounts, ones registered outside of your native country, you might see said account on the banning block soon.

Why? According to fansite Xboxic, Microsoft is cracking down on folks who have circumvented the Xbox 360 region lockout to take advantage of content available in different locales.

Why now? While licensing deals for demos and Xbox Live Arcade titles might not draw heat, the recent push by MS to sell television programming and films certainly does and enjoying content not specified for your region is a bad, bad thing.

Xboxic does not have confirmation of any accounts being banned, yet, but don't act surprised when your Japanese Live account doesn't work in a few weeks. Let us know if you get banned. And good luck! Michael McWhertor

Microsoft to ban fake Live accounts

Like many of you out there, I got bent over by Microsoft's recently launched Video store.

As I mentioned on Wednesday, Poseidon was taking forever for me to download, something that has nothing to do with my high-speed connection and everything to do with an overtaxed service on Microsoft's end.

Yesterday, with Poseidon still only 30 percent downloaded I tried canceling it, which essentially puts the download on hold. Then I tried downloading V for Vendetta, but was out of harddrive space. Apparently, when you start a download the service immediately marks the size of the file as used, to ensure you'll be able to get it. Of course, I had nowhere near enough space on my harddrive for two 6 gig plus movies. So I went in and physically deleted both, marked as incomplete files, thinking they had frozen and I could just start over. But when I went to redownload them, the service tried to charge me again.

OK, that was user error, though you'd think it could track whether you had watched or even finished downloading the movies before trying to double charge you.

So I went back in and bought V for Vendetta a second time. Again the movie started downloading at a snail's pace. By the time I had give up on it, and all of my visiting family had gone to sleep, the movie had downloaded 3 percent.

Microsoft late Thursday night acknowledged that they are having issues with the launch.

I just hung up on a conference call on this issue, and I wanted to post an update. As you know, we have been experiencing technical difficulties associated with the extremely high number of downloads from the Video Marketplace service over the past 24 hours. We understand these technical issues have resulted in a very unpleasant experience for our members, including extremely slow downloads or not receiving the content they purchased. We've made progress over the past 24-hours, and the team is dedicated to fixing the issues and continues to work as fast as they can around the clock to get the service running as seamlessly as you have come to expect. We strongly encourage all folks who have experienced an error message or did not receive a download they purchased to call customer support at 1-800-4MYXBOX. I also want to mention that if you see the 'Points have been deducted from your account...' message when you are trying to download free content, we are NOT deducting points. Thanks for your patience, and please know that the team is prepared to make things right for those affected, including refunding Microsoft Points where appropriate and as quickly as possible.

If you are having problems or have questions, you may want to head over to the Video Markeplace forum on Xbox.com. Members of the Video Marketplace team are over there answering questions and providing status updates on issues.

I think they need to take the service down until they can get it up to snuff. This is not the type of first Live experience they want new 360 owners to have and it certainly doesn't live up to their otherwise perfect service.

On the other hand, the TV service seems to be working fine for me. I purchased an episode of Robot Chicken around the same time as my Poseidon rental and sometime between all of the movie screw-ups the show downloaded.

So maybe they just need to take Movies down for a bit. Brian Crecente

Video Marketplace Status [Major Nelson]

Microsoft just pinged me to let me know that the monstrously slow download I've been experiencing while trying to rent Poseiden through the Xbox 360 is, in fact, not typical.

Due to the overwhelming popularity of the new full-length content following the launch on Xbox Live Marketplace we are aware some gamers are experiencing temporary difficulties accessing content, due to the volume of demand. Download times will vary depending on broadband speed and size of content, and we expect the current issues some gamers are experience will be resolved soon.

The rep went on to tell me that in a perfect world a two-hour HD movie would be about 5.85GB and, with a 6Mbps connection, should take about 2 1/2 hours to download. Fortunately, the service's streaming technology should let you start watching the movie in about ten minutes or so. Of course all of that is based on a bunch of variables, so experiences won't be the same for everyone.

So far, I'm much more impressed with the Movie service than I am the TV one. Brian Crecente

One hour and ten minutes. No, that's not how long it's took me to download the high-def, 4.5 gig version of Poseidon, it's how long it's taken me to download one-tenth of it. And that's with my console just sitting here, concentrating on the movie.

I think you could download a torrent of the movie faster.Brian Crecente

Update: Microsoft has official responded.

But it gets worse. According to the official Usage Restrictions for TV downloads you can't do anything with them but keep em on your 360.

Video Purchase You are granted a limited, non-transferable, non-commercial license to view and privately display this content solely via your Xbox 360 console as provided herein ane more fully described in the Xbox Live Terms of Use. You may download this content only on your initiating Xbox 360 console and view the content only via such console or via a "roaming" Xbox 360 console in accordance with the Xbox Live Terms of Use.

Limited? Non-transferable? Screw that, you can keep your TV shows. If I don't have the ability to save them off and convert them for portable use what's the point? Brian Crecente

9 1/2 Weeks
Akira Kurosawa's Dreams
Analyze This
Art of War
Ask the Dusk
ATL
Ballistic: Ecks Vs. Sever
Batman Forever
Chariots of Fire
Chinatown
Clash of the Titans
Congo
The Core
Cradle 2 the Grave
The Dead Pool
Deep Blue Sea
Exorcist III: The Heretic
Failure to Launch
Gallipoli
The Hunger
The Lake House
Looking for COmedy in the Muslim World
Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior
The Matrix
National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation
Natural Born Killers
Patriot Games
The Perfect Storm
Pootie Tang
Poseidon
Rat Race
Rebel Without a Cause
Romeo Must Die
Rosemary's Baby
The Shining
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
Star Trek VII: Generations
The Sum of All Fears
Superfly
Tequila Sunrise
Three Kings
THX
Timeline
Unforgiven
Untouchables
V is for Vendetta
We Were Soldiers
Zoolander

An impressive mix of movies. Anything that has Wrath of Khan, Dreams and Zoolander in it is OK in my book. I just wish there were a tad more new releases. Brian Crecente