Are you like me? Sometimes I find myself sitting at home playing Xbox 360 on a rainy day. Two, three, four hours go by and the rain just will not let up! A guy can only stand so much Call of Duty and Halo, right? I look over on my night stand and see my USB flash drive and remember my buddy recently put “The Hangover” on it.
Man, if only I hadn’t forgot my laptop charger at my girlfriends house. I thought I would be stuck with endless hours of boredom, when I remember there are USB ports on the front of my Xbox 360! I could think of no better way to spend the rest of my rainy day then watching The Hangover. The real question I had was how to get the movie to play off of my USB flash drive on to my 60 inch flat screen TV using my Xbox 360. So the first thing I did was just try and plug my flash drive in. Optimistically I thought maybe it would just start playing the same way it would when I put a DVD in my Xbox 360. I was wrong.
So I start flipping through my Xbox 360 menu thinking there has to be some way I can play my downloaded movie on my Xbox. I learned there are essentially four steps to play a movie off of an external hard drive or USB flash drive on to an Xbox 360. The first step is to plug your mass storage device in to your Xbox. The next step is to stop on the “My Xbox” heading and scroll right to the video library and select the video library. The third step is to open the portable device heading. The fourth and final step is to open your movie and enjoy!
One of the best applications on Xbox Live is the ability to watch and download movies. The console can do more than just play games, like all the other next-generation consoles do. There are several ways to play movies and download them through Xbox Live. All you need, firstly, is an active Xbox Live account. The service has affiliated itself with several websites and partners to ensure that you’re able to stream the latest movies and even some classics to your console. The main venues through which you can download Xbox Live movies are through the Live Marketplace and through Netflix.
The Xbox Live Marketplace works by customers buying movies and the like with points. Marketplace points can be purchased with a credit card at most retail stores or other outlets, and these are used in the Marketplace to buy movies and new games on Live Arcade. To buy movies, simply log in to the marketplace website from your Xbox 360 and go to the movies section. From here you can download movies for approximately 300-400 Xbox Live points, depending on the movie. There are many different genres available. Mainly, what seems to be top on the list are independently made films.
Netflix has also collaborated with Microsoft so customers of both companies can stream Netflix movies directly over their Xbox Live account. The process works by connecting the console to the Internet, accessing the Netflix website and then you can play Xbox movies directly from Netflix. The process takes as little as 30 seconds for the video to start streaming. To do it, all you need is an active Netflix account as well as an Xbox Live account that’s been upgraded to gold status. Also, you can watch TV shows this way as well. These are the two most prominent methods of getting movies to play on your Xbox 360, but more are sure to come in the future.
