Shacknews had some hands-on time with the New Xbox Experience and the included Netflix streaming feature. Is the service everything everyone hopes it'll be? Well, not quite:
However, they did say that the test episode of Heroes they downloaded went smoothly and was available in 1080i resolution. It is the first step of the service being offered, and there's no doubt that future updates will fix some of these issues.
The NXE and Netflix service both arrive next week with the Fall dash update to the Xbox 360.
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In other words, anything you watch on your Xbox 360 has to be added to your Queue from the computer first. There's no way to browse the overall Netflix selection, to add to your Instant Queue, from the Xbox 360.
That may not be a problem for those that have massive Netflix Queues, but for folks like me who keep small lists, it's rather annoying. I wanted to be able to plop down on my couch and find something that looked good, which would've been rather handy when when having people over.
However, I can't imagine everyone crowding around my computer monitor and saying, "Oh, that looks good. Pick that one!"
I understand that this caveat isn't limited to the Xbox 360, and in fact extends to all of the Netflix-ready devices, so to some, this is nothing new. But for the legions of unaware Xbox 360 owners, it may come as an unpleasant surprise.
There's also one other problem. Those 300 or so HD movies aren't labeled as such, so there's no way to know if what you're about to watch is in HD or not.
That may not be a problem for those that have massive Netflix Queues, but for folks like me who keep small lists, it's rather annoying. I wanted to be able to plop down on my couch and find something that looked good, which would've been rather handy when when having people over.
However, I can't imagine everyone crowding around my computer monitor and saying, "Oh, that looks good. Pick that one!"
I understand that this caveat isn't limited to the Xbox 360, and in fact extends to all of the Netflix-ready devices, so to some, this is nothing new. But for the legions of unaware Xbox 360 owners, it may come as an unpleasant surprise.
There's also one other problem. Those 300 or so HD movies aren't labeled as such, so there's no way to know if what you're about to watch is in HD or not.
However, they did say that the test episode of Heroes they downloaded went smoothly and was available in 1080i resolution. It is the first step of the service being offered, and there's no doubt that future updates will fix some of these issues.
The NXE and Netflix service both arrive next week with the Fall dash update to the Xbox 360.
Source