Well after my last article showing how great the Video Store on Xbox live is I decided to go one better. Having purchased a zune shortly after it came out last november and wanting to use video from the market place on it I had to figure out a way.

DISCLAIMER: Copying video from pay per view services is illegal and bad shit can happen to you if you are caught. The MPAA doesn't take lightly your pirating of their media. So if you do this and go to jail its on you. You have been warned. If you damage your equipment because you don't know how to wire it up, thats your own fault for being a dumbass and not reading the fucking manual. If you burn your house down it's not my problem. EVERYTHING HERE IS DONE AT YOUR OWN RISK.

Now that thats out of the way.

Even though the Live Marketplace and Zune both use Microsoft Points as currency, the media isn't exactly interoperable. There really isn't much video to be had on the Zune Marketplace, and the video that is there won't necessarily work on your xbox360. The 360 is capable of playing all kinds of media including Divx, Xvid, MP4 etc but not DRM protected video from a different Marketplace. The zune plays the DRM protected video from the Zune Marketplace but not from the Xbox live Market place.

Whats a guy gotta do to make things work together?

Easy. Buy a Neuros MP4 Recorder 2Plus or Neuros OSD. Neuros Rocks. 

1. First step is to find a movie you like on the Live Market Place and rent it.
2. Install the Neuros Recorder between the 360 and the TV/Reciever.
3. Make sure you have a large enough card to hold amount of Video you want to record in the Neuros. I use 2 Gig cards, because at 640x480 in Fine quality setting you get nearly 4 hours of record time. Not too shabby.
4. Navigate to the movie you downloaded on your Xbox using the video blade in the dashboard. Hit play and then Hit record on the Neuros remote.
5. Watch the movie or go do something until its finished. The Neuros records in realtime any video input it recieves ignoring Macrovision etc.
6. Once the movie is over hit stop on the Neuros remote.
7. Pull the card and stick it into your laptop or card reader. Rename the file to something that makes sense.
8. Sync the file to your Zune or iPod with the Zune Software or iTunes.
9. Watch the movie on you Zune.

It's that easy.

The same idea applies to putting your DVD's on your Zune, old video tapes, your gameplay footage, or whatever. Since I use my 360 to play DVD's and having since retired my DVD Player to bedroom duty I regularly use this method to back up anything I own. Works great.

There are other recorders out there like the one from Sandisk, but I like the vesatility of the Neuros unit in using different media types. As always YMMV.