... The two-year-old Xbox 360 is far more polished. Like Apple TV, it can either stream photos, music and videos (Windows PCs or, with a $20 shareware program, even Macs) or play them off its hard drive.
What’s different, though, is that you can’t copy files to this hard drive over the network; you can download shows and movies only straight to the Xbox from Microsoft’s own fledgling online store. You can buy TV shows for $2 each ($3 in high definition), or rent movies for $4 ($6 for high def). Microsoft movies self-destruct 24 hours after you start watching them. (Apple movies cost full DVD price, but at least you can keep them forever.)
Note, too, that the Xbox’s primary mission — playing games — doesn’t always suit music and movie playback. It can’t get onto a wireless network without an add-on transmitter ($100 — yikes). You can’t control the speed of a slide show or fast-forward through a song.
And in general, the included game controller makes a lousy remote control. There are no dedicated buttons for controlling playback; instead, you have to walk through the buttons on an on-screen control bar to reach, say, the pause function.
And alas, these products can require a journey through the hell of home networking. The Xbox couldn’t get online at first, thanks to an “MTU failure.” A Microsoft techie in India named “Mike” claimed that my cable-modem company would have to make a change in my service. (He was wrong; a router setting had to be changed instead.) ...