The one with Sky on the Xbox 360

So after an initial “delay” where the boffins at Sky and Microsoft had to clock in for some over time, I finally got to check out the Sky player on the Xbox 360 last night.

So big deal I hear you whimper at your screen! And maybe you’d be right! Sure if you want to watch Sky you’ll watch it on a TV with a Sky boxed attached! But there’s something incredible about having a video games console pretend its a Sky box. Its a fantastic feat in my book. Stop playing Forza 3 and have a quick peep at Sky News. And sure why not. And the best thing is you don’t have to go changing channels as its all contained in your 360.

Then I had a bit more of an indepth nose around with the on demand services. Being a Sky Movies subscriber I get access to hundreds and hundreds of on demand movies. Which in a nutshell is similar to Sky Anytime, except this isn’t the anorexic Sky anytime. No sir, this is a morbidly obese, ready for a gastric bypass Sky anytime. I was blown away with the selection of movies, as I said hundreds and hundreds. And try the Sky sports section, truck loads of highlights and live events for you to catch up on. If only an actual Sky +HD box had this kind of capability, although I’d imagine the future for Sky will involve alot like this! And speaking of the future, its going to be streaming all the way!

Now, If I had a criticism it would be that there is no HD or Dolby Digital content on the service, which given the Zune marketplace is bursting at the seems with it, is a bit of surprise. But an educated guess would lead me to believe that HD will follow in due course!

You don’t even have to be a sky subscriber to avail of the service as you can pay for it through your 360 but if you are a sky subscriber (Movies/Sports etc) then this is all for free! Just log in with your sky user name and password!

Either way its an amazing process and couple this with the recent Twitter / Facebook /  1080p streaming Vids, you have Microsoft belting this one right out of the park! In the words of Darth, “Impressive”. I’m a huge Sony fan. I’ll always look for a Sony product over anything else but with the recent updates to the 360, the Playstation 3 is so far behind at this point, it’ll need Marty McFly in a Delorean to catch up!