#2,3, idigital's staff did a piece on the various consoles' media capabilities recently.
They blasted away at the 360 - focusing nearly singularly on the 360's lack of native wireless networking support.
Interestingly, and despite their focus on using consoles for media, they didn't even mention the 360's ability to be used as a Windows Media Center extender. When they did mention the 360's Live Marketplace, they failed to mention, or explain how it is used to access and download movies and television shows - many which are in HD and most of which one may "keep" for as long as they own their 360!
They also failed to explain how the 360 can see and use media, even protected media, on other computers outside of use as a media extender - where protected/DRM'd content "CAN" be accessed [provided it is in default locations on a host].
They focused instead on how that content could not be loaded to the 360's hard drive directly - sync'd as is done with the AppleTV. They failed to notice that it does not matter a whit - and is frankly idiotic to have to sync and move content - particularly over a wireless network! I mean, isn't it better and cool that one does not have to move, re-copy, re-store and muck with content in order to use it???? Is it not better to simply play it from where it lays on another drive that already has it stored and validated for authorized use???? I call that "smart!"
They totally failed to see why the 360 is a great HD extender in so many ways, and as #1, points out, it is a very quick and inexpensive way to extend many forms of media to another room - it works as a PVR-DR in this context and under Vista, up to 5 such devices may be used at one time - that is a very cheap way to extend TV and media to a room - and at the same time, avail that room to gaming, DVD's and HD-DVD's with the added 176 dollar HD DVD player.
As an instant on, diverse media experience node, the 360 is really good and certainly offers enough to be considered alongside many other less capable and more costly options.
**the guys at indigital [Revision3] did frequently state that they intended to piss off fanboi's favoring each platform, and each admitted that they basically sucked as "GAMERS" - the central focus of the 360 - they failed to offer that they also suck as technology reviewers. They closed with the observation that Microsoft's goal opposite the 360 was to sell more wireless adapters - as if any idiot would favor wireless for media transport?!? and no, UWB is not yet an option or even remotely practical in that market.
Any case, I wish people would be a lot more accurate and objective - what will they do this fall when IPTV comes to the 360 as an option for subscribers - ATT is adding 10,000 users a month! Will they persist in asserting the 360 is lame as a media HUB, because it has no native wireless adapter? Just as they persist in asserting that lossy BD compression technologies are better than VC-1 on HD DVD 30?!? Probably. Punks, I say... they're just a bunch of commie punks - LOL
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