Like all dedicated Xbox 360 fanboys, I’ve spent my morning delving into Engadget and Gizmodo‘s New Xbox Experience (NXE) coverage. Buried within Engadget’s write-up was one very compelling picture (above) and related commentary:
A small perk — but huge deal as far as we’re concerned — is the inclusion of a limited amount of HD content. We previewed Heroes in HD, and the quality was stunning. Right now there’s only about 300 titles on offer, but we think after folks get a taste of this, they’ll be begging for some expansion.
The inclusion of select HD streaming is quite promising, especially in conjunction with the new Starz lineup and as long as Netflix continues to freely bundle online video with unlimited disc rental plans. Though I wonder if this will be an Xbox-only exclusive for now, or if we’ll be seeing HD streaming on computers and other hardware platforms soon. We do know the Roku Netflix box is capable of outputting HD resolutions, but is the hardware capable of crunching and caching the content? Remember, most 360s have plenty of hard drive storage…
While the Xbox team was taking preview applicants, I imagine most of us will be impatiently awaiting the official launch of NXE on November 19th.