Based on the compression used for the 720p movies (there was no 1080i/p content announced), the expectation is that a two hour HD movie will be in the 6 GB range or so (sounds a little low to me, but….). This is a fine line between compressing too much (and introducing artifacts) or having fules too large for download. I believe they’re using the WMV-HD method…

I’m curious how they are going to pull this off. An HD movie will easily take up 15-20GB’s. The 360’s HD is only 20GB’s.

I won’t be surprised if the Zune is integrated into this somehow. J Allard, the person who was in charge of the 360, became the lead for the Zune.

So I’m guessing you’ll be able to Microsoft points to purchase songs, tv shows, movies, etc, and move them to the Zune.

You probably know this already, but they finally removed that stupid limitation of being able to stream videos to the 360 only from an MCE machine. It was mentioned that you’d be able to stream videos from a Zune to the 360, which is cool.

But when I heard about the 360 movie/TV downloads, I was telling the hubby that MS better increase the capacity of the Zune and allow people to offload their purchased videos (and the rentals) to the Zune. That way they can clear up space on the 360’s HD, as well as take their movies/TV shows with them on the go.

I’d be very surprised and disappointed if that isn’t the way MS is going with the 360-Zune integration.