There’s a small event going on right now in Los Angeles called the E3 Media and Business Summit, which is the place where Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo, as well as a host of games developers unveil plans for the next year.

Today was the first day, and Microsoft was the first of the big three to show its hand. And one of the announcements means that Xbox 360 owners will soon be getting more access to online movie downloads.

This will be coming from Netflix, the online movie rental company, which is teaming up with Microsoft to allow Netflix subscribers, who also own an Xbox 360, to have access to its extensive catalogue through their consoles.

Xbox 360 owners already have access to some full length movies and television shows via Xbox Live, but now a deal has been done which will see original programming being launched on the service.

Xbox Live is Microsoft’s Web platform, exclusively available to Xbox 360 owners. Of the 18 million people who own the current generation console, 10 million have signed up for the service.

The service currently offers various different for sale, either by use of a credit card or redeeming points for participating in various Xbox Live activities.

Many games, including user created ones are available, as well as films like Saw and The Departed, and full episodes of TV shows such as South Park.

Original Programming On Way

Now, from a deal struck between Microsoft and Hollywood producer and talent agent Peter Safran, original programming will now also be heading on to Xbox Live.

After last month’s announcement that DixX support was coming to the Sony PS3 games console, there was speculation that the same would be happening on the Microsoft Xbox 360 soon.

It now seems that in the latest dashboard update, there was the inclusion of limited DivX support, although it’s not 100% functional, and Microsoft tried to call the files anything but DivX.

The Xbox Team’s official blog announced:

“[The Xbox 360] now supports files encoded using MPEG-4 Part 2, Simple and Advanced Simple Profile, [which are] often referred to as Xvid or DivX video files”

This is sure to be great news for the millions of Xbox 360 owners, as it increases the library of media content they can now have access to through their trusty consoles.

Looking at the Joost interface it will be obvious to many that this is something that you could imagine on your TV screen. In fact, the first moment I saw Joost I thought that’s exactly where the company wants to take it.

Mike Volpi, the new CEO of Joost arriving from Cisco. told The New York Times that:

Joost is a piece of software and it can reside on a variety of platforms… It could be on a television set-top box. Or potentially it could be imbedded in a TV set with an Ethernet connection, or on a mobile phone, or in some alternative device that might come out in the future. The flexibility is really high.”

Possible Set Top Box Partners

But who will this STB partner be? Joost could theoretically just go out there and strike a deal with any STB manufacturer to create a Joost IPTV box that will bring Joost to the TV set.

However, I’ll put my money on the fact that they are also waiting for a deal with a popular brand with a large consumer base.

Let's look at the options:

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Summary: We will soon be replacing our TVs more often than our PCs as the television advances towards becoming a simple and functional living room PC. The dominant maker of this new hi-tech TV could be one of many companies that could overthrow the Microsoft monopoly.

And at the center of this transformation is the internet.

Mark Cuban recently said that we’ll soon be replacing our TV’s more often than we replace our PCs. I’d have to agree with Mark on this. The evolution of the living room is putting more pressure on the TV set to be able to do more.

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The Apple TV was finally released last week and as I expected the reviews of the device are not that flattering. I’ve said already that the Apple TV was over-hyped and I’ve noted a number of alternatives to the Apple TV (now there are even more).

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Bill Gates recently shunned current TV offerings at the World Economic Forum saying that the internet is the future. In Bill’s words:

“I’m stunned how people aren’t seeing that with TV, in five years from now, people will laugh at what we’ve had.”

Bill Gates recently appeared on the Daily Show on Comedy Central (video below) and continued to stress that current TV is nothing compared to what the internet will offer.