After the announcement by CinemaNow that users could now watch leased bought/rented videos on their Xbox 360s I figured I would give it a shot. I am a Netflix user, but I have watched a few movies via the Xbox Live Marketplace (XLM) recently as well. I really like both services, and thought that CinemaNow’s larger library might be a good substitute for the XLM. I didn’t intend to do a write-up on this, but after my experience I thought it could be something that others could benefit from. I will be approaching this in two parts: first, the quality of the CinemaNow service regardless of the playback device; and second, the process to bring it to the TV.

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So after my Wii post from yesterday, I wanted to clear something up. This post really has nothing to do with the Wii, but the response to a statement I made about the Wii got me started on this train of thought.

In the post, I said that Nintendo is doing very well with what I call their strategy of selling “checkers instead of chess”. Although it was not intended to be insulting, apparently it came off that way. For me, I don’t care if you enjoy checkers or chess, there’s no qualitative difference, they are both just games. Some people like to read books for leisure, while I don’t usually find anything about reading books to be leisurely. People have different tastes. It is great that Nintendo wants to push to create games for people who don’t want to literally invest time in a game.

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There is something wrong with the Wii?!?

Yes, I know that the Wii is the darling of the video game industry right now, and that people believe that Nintendo can do no wrong, but we are only 20 months (or 8 depending on your perspective) into this generation of gaming. A winner won’t be crowned in this generation for some time to come. The PS2 came out 7 years ago! The Wii isn’t going to have it so easy.

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