The Xbox Live Video Marketplace is awesome. I can download movies for rent, which is just as well since most movies nowadays are only worth a single, once-and-done viewing. For example, I watched Superman Returns in HD over the New Year’s weekend. Quick movie review: it was better than I expected, but worse than I would have liked it to be. A better value is the television episodes, since I can purchase instead of rent them. As a fan of his previous show, I bought the entire season of Jamie Kennedy’s Blowin’ Up, which my wife and I thoroughly enjoyed. And at $2 an episode, it was a great value over the alternative. I can purchase these shows at the same price point but have a greater experience because I can watch them on my television and home theater in 480p or greater; as opposed to iTunes, where I am restricted to my iPod or PC in lower resolution. For a grand total of $14, it’s something I can watch again and again and be happy with my purchase.

But this is where the problem begins. Superman Returns in HD is 7GB – over half the usable space of the Xbox 360′s hard drive. With game downloads like expansions and XBLA titles, I have around 10GB of space left. Seven half-hour episodes of Blowin’ Up is about 1.6GB in total, and with the random South Park episode and the two Viva Pinata HD episodes for my daughter, I have a little bit of space left over, right? Well, I also bought the first episode of Star Trek: Enterprise in HD, which is 1.9GB. Which means, something has to go in order to make space.

Now, Superman Returns is only a rental, but I had to delete content in order to make room for it – that is, temporary space which I then would have to redownload content afterwards if I want to watch it again. I shouldn’t have to delete content I’ve purchased, but the problem I have is not deleting content because I can always redownload it. It’s the redownloading part I have issues with. Not only do my active downloads contend with my online gaming sessions, but even if I’m not playing I have to keep my Xbox on while I unnecessarily download content over and over again. Something tells me this isn’t good for the life of the console, and it probably won’t be cheap for Microsoft’s bandwidth bills in the long run.

It also negatively impacts my future purchases on the service. I’d be inclined to purchase more episodes of South Park, or Jericho in HD, or Star Trek: Enterprise and not wait for the potential HD-DVD release. But I won’t because this purchased content would never be just a click away. It would be a click and a two-hour download away, during which time I would have decided not to watch it and pop in a DVD instead. Which makes me think twice about spending the money on content if I’m going to have the time to think of something more convenient to do in its place. TV episodes and movie rentals can never co-exist on this service without the viewer receiving a detrimental and ultimately negative experience.

I’ve recommended a couple of solutions Microsoft could implement which would ease the pain, but there is really only one thing Microsoft can do to resolve this immediately, and that is releasing a higher capacity hard drive. I’m not talking a 60GB or 100GB; I’m talking 200GB or 250GB, the size of a typical HD DVR, which can hold 20-30 hours of HD content. That means one complete series of hour-long HD episodes can exist at once on a single hard drive, with room for HD movie downloads. This solution is definitely acceptable. I may not be able to have all my purchased content co-exist on one hard drive, but at least I can have a sizable portion of it on hand with little need to redownload.

A recent interview with Ars Technica indicates Microsoft is keeping mum on any future upgrades to the hard drive, but they might want to start spreading news of a larger hard drive before negative consumer sentiment reaches the studio executives. We should all write to Paramount, Warner Bros., and Viacom about how Microsoft is stifling our purchases and seems downright glee about the whole thing. I’m sure they won’t feel the same about lost potential sales, and maybe they would threaten to support a better suited device unless Microsoft fixes the problem tout de suite.

As I’ve said, it’s an awesome service, but it’s one marred with inconveniences. I’d be more than happy to continue to support the service as long as they reciprocate by supporting their paying consumers.