Interscription

Prior to delving into Crackdown last night, Khidr and I tried to watch a little Skyland (the free promotional episode) in our second experience with the Xbox Live Video Marketplace.  This would also mark the second time I have completely lost faith in the concept of the Xbox Live Video Marketplace.  You guys get one more shot…

For historical purposes, I should probably document our experience with Superman Returns.  This was our only purchase from the Marketplace; Khidr hadn’t watched this yet, and I figured this would be a great opportunity to see how she flies.  It was a terrible experience.  We obviously opted for the hi-def, 720p version (despite the SEVEN GIG size, which required me to purge most of what I had saved on the paltry 13-gig-for-reals-actual hard drive…where’s my new hard drive again, Microsoft?)  The first night (it was a Monday night), we tried to download the movie.  After several hours (started after work, around 6PM, and checked back after 11PM), we had 7%.  SEVEN percent.  "Oooooh-kay then; no movies tonight.  Let’s shoot for Wednesday…" 

I did the unthinkable on an Xbox 360; I let it DOWNLOAD OVERNIGHT.  (Good practice for when I buy a PS3… )

The next morning, I checked, and there was apparently a dashboard update, kicking us off of Live and stopping the download…OK, THIS is getting upsetting.  I started it again before leaving for work.  Wednesday rolls around, and we start watching the movie.  My thought here is…does everyone need to plan a couple of days ahead for movie watching?  Doesn’t this kind of experience make Blockbuster an attractive store front?  (Let’s not even get into the Netflix-centric movie experiences…)

As for Skyland, we ran into a few too many problems, unfortunately.  Firstly, even though it is a free download, we were subject to some strange error after choosing it to download (the error spouted off something about not being able to download the usage rights for the file, even though "points were deducted".  Um, what?)  After attempting to download it AGAIN, it started up, seemingly with no problem.  What WAS exciting (potentially, I should say) was the "Ready To Play" status of the downloaded show.  With the 360’s background downloading feature, you have "prompts" that pop up at the bottom of the screen.  These prompts show when the download is complete (it used to show when it started as well, but the Fall Dashboard update deactivated the latter, which seems to make the whole thing happen cleaner).  We received a pop-up stating that the item was "Ready to Play".  Could this mean that the item will stream?  (I’ve found out recently that this has always worked, at least, that was the plan…)  I hit the Guide button, and chose Play.  I was brought to the Media Blade, and sent to a screen with the Xbox 360’s "hourglass", coupled with a Please Wait message.  After about 60 seconds, an error slid out, stating the media was not able to be played.  I assumed this feature simply wasn’t ready for primetime, and we continued on to Crackdown.

After our session, I returned to the Media Blade, and tried a second time to play the free episode of Skyland.  SAME result: 60 seconds of hourglass, error message.  I’d be throttling Microsoft employees right now if I paid for this experience.  I deleted the file in disgust, smouldering in my disgust.

This really does have the potential to be an amazing product, but I’ve been bitten twice already by a less-than-acceptable end-user experience.  Am I the only person going through this?  Khidr rightfully labelled this free download of Skyland as many people’s first demonstration of the Xbox Live Video Marketplace experience…is this how you’re gonna go down, folks?

We went to the TV Shows section of the in the Video menu of the Media Blade, and chose Skyland.