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Milking the Boob Tube
What's next? Sanford and Son on your DS?

Screw Tivo; you can now download your favorite television shows and movies while you're chainsawin' fools in Gears of War. But don't think your 360 is going to replace your cable box, though -- think of it more as a way to keep your ass glued to the sofa. "It creates more affinity and reasons to have Xbox Live in the home," says Scott Henson, director of platform strategy for Xbox Live. "The ambition that we have is to make it mass market," he explains. "We want game consoles to mean something to everyone."

Right now several television channels (MTV and Comedy Central) and two movie studios (Warner Bros. and Paramount) are signed up, but it may take a while before Xbox Live Marketplace becomes a virtual Blockbuster.

"We're only releasing 50 [movies] on Xbox Live over the next six months," says a source within one of Microsoft's content partners. "Everyone wants to see how secure the Xbox network is before we put more content on it." The movie studios fear plundering by software pirates, which is mostly why you can only rent (but not buy) high-definition movies.

Despite the scare, Henson says Xbox's digital rights management is the advantage Microsoft has over Sony's large content library. "The only way it [digital distribution] is going to happen is if
Sony has made that bet on security," Henson says. "We built that infrastructure four years ago -- it's not a switch you can just flip on.

According to our sources, the PlayStation 3's infrastructure is still screwy, but that doesn't mean it doesn't plan to provide downloads, too. In fact, Sony is already offering HD movies in Japan. "Sony is going to pick up on this trend," says John Smedley, president of Sony Online Entertainment. "The system has been designed to take care of all kinds of digital content. It's been designed that way for a reason."