We’re all but overwhelmed with Video on Demand services. Netflix, Film 4oD, BBC iPlayer and so an all offering watch programmes when you want on the device of your choice. Sounds great, with the only proviso being that you need a half decent internet connection, or something north of 10 Mb/s. So why should Xbox Video on the Xbox One be any different? I certainly did not think so, however I missed out on seeing Gravity when it was on the big screen last year, and so when those awfully nice people at Microsoft sent me an email saying it was available to view on Xbox Video a couple of days before it was released on DVD or blu-ray, I jumped at the opportunity.
So after deciding to purchase it rather than rent, I pressed the play button with expectations of having to go and amuse myself for maybe an hour until the HD video had sufficiently buffered to let me watch it. Boy was I wrong! It started playing instantly, no pause, no hesitation, no buffering…instant HD video down a 3.5 Mb/s broadband connection. I can’t get most YouTube videos to play on SD right away, so what on earth (get the pun) was going on? Well all I can say is that it never once stopped, paused or buffered for one moment. My movie experience IMMEDIATELY became about the movie, and not the device or the service or having a rant about how long it’s going to take BT to get Fibre Broadband into my home. Truly it was fabulous, a tech experience unrivalled by just about anything else I’ve touched or used including the much vaunted iPad and iPhone. It just worked.
But that is not the end of the story. I had to go out after 40 minutes or so into the film, and was back about 3 hours later and decided to resume watching. Resume is the right word, as I signed in, selected Xbox Video and the clever little thing asked me if I wanted to resume watching the movie. I said yes, and lo and behold, we’re back in with full HD without a hiccup. After a few tweets I discovered that my experience is not unique, that others have found the Xbox Video service to be as prompt and reliable as this. So apart from having a pretty amazing viewing experience of what I think is a pretty amazing film, what else is there to conclude (apart from the gratuitous Sanrda Bullock at the Oscars picture below).
It’s this – our local Blockbuster closed a couple months back which at the time was pretty disappointing. Now that I finally had a working blu-ray drive here was the opportunity to watch movies like Gravity in their most glorious home presentations. Now, I don’t care so much other than mourning the loss of a great store with pretty cool staff who I assume are out there looking for work, which I have total sympathy for. Now I can watch pretty much any movie I fancy, rent or buy and I never have to leave the home because my Xbox Video service just works beautifully. Next up for us is probably going to be Rush, the Ron Howard F1 epic which again I missed in cinemas last year, and I now know with confidence that I can sit the family down with their popcorn and juice, and we can watch the movie of our choice when we want to.
Microsoft has got this piece of the Xbox One experience seriously right, and my console is staying firmly plugged into input one. Guess there is something to be said for having the biggest collection of cloud servers after all.
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