I had a few folks over this weekend to test out the HD downloads from Xbox Marketplace (yeah, I know how to party!) I wanted to see what the experience was like. Overall, I was pleased. The selection was pretty good and it was easy to use my points to buy the file. It took 6+ hours to download, but I started it the night before so it was no big deal. It hung up at 68%, but I just started it again in the morning and it finished in about an hour.

As for the video itself, the encode was very good. During playback, it seemed to drop frames in the beginning. I’m chalking it up to a slow HDD rather than a poor encode. Either it stopped dropping frames part way through or I stopped noticing it. Either way, I doubt most consumers would care. I’m told the HD-DVD drives do not have that issue, but I’ve not been able to try it out yet (hint, hint Scott).

Would I do it again. Yes. there are some drawbacks. The main one is you have to plan in advance, but since they don’t expire for 2 weeks, it’s pretty easy to say I want to watch a movie this weekend and just fire it up during the week. I’ve not cross checked the titles available against Bluray or HD-DVD catalogs, but I bet they have things not available on either format. One last thing…I watched the Decent. That had to be the worst movie of 2006. I previously thought The Day After Tomorrow was the worst movie I have seen. this might just replace that.

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