[MacosNerd]

Seems to be that rumors are floating around about a possible partnership

here's the msnbc news article about it. Since MSNBC is partly owned by MS so its natural that they'd have a pro MS perspective.

Does the xbox/netflix have more synergy then itunes/apple tv? I'm not really a fan of the apple tv concept but so far it was the best approach to get movies rented from the net to the tv. the Xbox seems to be the next best approach provided you already own the console, if course of the WII and PS3 jump on board to this concept that would give Apple a run of the money in the movie rental business.

[Nodnarb]

It will indeed be very interesting to see what happens. I have an xbox, and the marketplace is pretty cool (never really get anything from it though). I could see that being a huge market though, as there are so many people with xbox's and a lot of them obviously tend to have some extra income...

Of course, I'd love the AppleTV/iTunes solution so much better, but the one big advantage MS has is that many people already have the xbox (or could justify the purchase of one for multiuse rather than just downloading movies) whereas AppleTV would have to be a new purchase for everybody... but then again, Apple does have the advantage of being "the iPod company" to many people, so those people might look to Apple for a solution when this becomes more mainstream (and also, those millions of people with iPods/phones will want to play the movies on the go... MS and netflix would have to do something about that).