Tvmama

No Comments Written by Atila on July 17, 2008 – 6:05 am

The New York Times thinks so, and goes on to list the ways. Then it knocks down the straw man it has just set up (typical journalistic trick).

Here goes with our summary of the NYT comments:

• Xbox360’s Pluses: Selecting a title and starting show is simple.

• Xbox360’s Minuses: $400 for the model with a hard disk is a big investment, especially if you’re not a gamer. Only 165 movies available. More are promised.

• Xbox360 pricing: $4 for a new release that can be saved for up to 14 days. But once you start watching one, you have only 24 hours to finish before it expires. Is that enough time? How many times do you intend to watch something and then something (like life, kids, the dog) intervenes?

• Alternatives are limited. For example, Netflix has 80,000 titles on DVD, but only 2,000 for electronic delivery.

• The e-movie services, such as MovieLink, CinemaNow, Vongo, Amazon’s Unbox and Wal-Mart, send films to your computer, require movie manager software or a Web browser application. But they’re Windows/Explorer only (obviously, not iTunes).