Gaming Consoles as the Central Control Point of the House

I was looking into buying a blu-ray dvd player this last weekend when a friend suggested that I just purchase an X-box. They said that not only would it play blu-rays, it would play games and would also cost less than the average blu-ray dvd player. I did some research and the other interesting aspect is that the X-box is also already connected to the internet. One of the discussion points surround the dvd players was whether or not they had a connection point to the internet that allowed them to function as a central control point to download movies, update software, download music, etc. It seemed like the discussion focused around a larger philosophical point - how are all of the devices in the house connected and controlled and how does the house communicate digitally with the outside world. In a sense, what is the next generations operating system look like? It would seem that Microsoft has positioned themselves well to compete in that market by placing a device in the middle of a house's device ecosystem that is also connected to the outside world. It will be interesting to see how this race evolves over the next couple years.