Microsoft Xbox One X
DOES MICROSOFT’S NEW CONSOLE CROSS THE STREAMS?
WHILE WE WOULDN’T recommend going out and netting yourself a new $650 console if you’re only interested in streaming services and local media playback, their broad app compatibility and regular software upkeep has made them ideal media hubs in the past. Sadly, the Xbox one X was plagued by some initial controversy over its poor 4K Blu-ray playback performance at launch (which has since been fixed by Microsoft) and when you look at the number of apps that were ported to the new 4K system in these early days, it wasn’t as comprehensive as we were hoping. While we were able to look at Netflix, Stan, Foxtel Go, Amazon Prime, TenPlay, Plus7, 9Now and ABC iview on the new 4K console, it missed out on Foxtel Now, SBS On Demand and smaller services like Mubi. This incomplete offering is made up somewhat by a reasonable number of local file viewers and media playback apps including Plex, VLC and Cloud Media Player that’ll allow you to play locally stored movies and TV series. Under the entertainment menu, you get categorised trending shows and movies in the one place, but sadly, you can’t search across your subscribed streaming services using the one interface yet. While in years gone by, the controller was preferable to the 10-foot remotes of the top media streaming hubs, the increased demand in streaming has seen smartphone integration, facilitating keyboard typing, voice searching and convenient swiping control schemes to make the controller feel inefficient for signing in and searching.