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Bugs Plague New Xbox 360 Video Service
eldavojohn writes "The BBC is running a story on problems with the Xbox 360's HD video service that went live a few days ago. I have wondered quite a bit how Microsoft runs the proxy caches for this service and how they are ensuring that their end consumers are not creating high amounts of internet traffic while downloading HD video." From the article: "Gamers can buy TV programmes but the movies are rented and are automatically deleted from the console's hard drive after a fixed period. 'We've made progress over the past 24 hours, and the team is dedicated to fixing the issues and continues to work as fast as they can around the clock to get the service running as seamlessly as you have come to expect,' wrote Mr Hryb, who is Xbox Live's director of programming, on his Major Nelson Xbox blog.
There will be bugs for a while. Microsoft will attempt to iron out those bugs. Microsoft has the advantage that this is an added feature. People buy the Xbox 360 as a game system, it won't be a big deal if the video download service takes a while to get up and running. Of course people who have paid for downloads that haven't worked will be pissed.
Why do they even have a fixed period of time before a movie is deleted from a person's hard-drive?
The XBox 360's hard-drive is 20GBs which (should) allow for (about) 20 to 40 SD movies or 5 to 10 HD movies; eventually they will have to 'return' the movie (that is delete it) or they will run out of hard-drive space. Currently most rental places have eliminated late fees (with a small restocking fee after a week), and online services have no time limitations, so why would I pay the same ammount and be put in a far more limited system?