360 Media Center Ponderance

I know that the 360 is capable in terms of technology of being a super-box. A machine that digitally will do everything I want it to. I used to think that my computer would eventually be the slave to feed music, photos and movies to my television via iTunes or whatever that new Apple iTV thing is. But with Live's Marketplace now making room for tv shows and movie downloads, I'm sorting of looking to that little white box.

My computer stores a couple thousand music files, a few more thousand pictures and a handful of movies, tv shows and podcasts. With iTunes and Xbox Connect, I can share all of that stuff to the other computers and my Xbox. This has been really, really cool. So what motivation do I have to pulling more content down onto a box that is all locked up and right off the bat is going to require more disk space for movies and television shows.

None.

I think a lot of people are going to love the new functionalities of Live, and as they upgrade and unlock it, the 360. A lot of people are going to pay the premium for HD content too, something Apple doesn't offer yet. And if Microsoft starts bundling their new Zune's music store into Live and then adds syncing to the 360...well...the permutations are endless.

But as long as Microsoft works with tight publishers, it's never going to be the do-it-all box that we want it to be and we'll keep using our computers to rip our movies and move them around the house. In today's day and age, I'd still rather buy a plastic cd and be free to put it anywhere than buy digitally and be stuck on one machine.