the Vudu movie box (300), which, even a year after its debut, hardly anyone has ever heard of. It’s a small, black set-top box that offers instant playback of 10000 movies and TV shows. (The first 30 seconds of each are on the hard drive; as you start watching, the rest downloads in the background.) The four-button remote control has an ingenious clickable scroll wheel like the one on a computer mouse.
So why hasn’t the Vudu become more of a hit? You know, apart from the fact that there’s been no advertising? After all, it trumps services such as CinemaNow and MovieLink because the movies play on your TV, not your computer. It beats HBO and Showtime because you pay by the movie, not by the month, and recent movies become available much sooner. (Vudu movies become available for sale on the Vudu the same day they’re out on DVD. They generally become available for 24-hour rental 30 days later. Except for Warner movies, which are rentable on day one. Go, Warner!)
And it’s better than driving back and forth to the video store because — well, because you don’t have to drive back and forth to the video store.
Of course, plenty of people would argue that DVD-by-mail services like Netflix and Blockbuster Online are still the way to go. They offer just about every movie ever made, impose no viewing deadlines and charge a flat fee for nearly unlimited movies on DVD. The catch: they’re still not instant.
You have to wait for each DVD to come in the mail. And any Netflix subscriber can tell you what a bummer it is to crash onto the couch after a hard day, only to realise that all you’ve got on hand from Netflix are two depressing war documentaries.
In any case, Vudu has quietly been making the deal even better. The price has been reduced by 100 and many movies are now available in high definition. The company has also added a channel for sex movies — a cynical ploy for success if there ever was one — and an accompanying parental-controls screen. Another recent enhancement: you can extend a Vudu rental for a second day for 1.
The 24-hour window is absurd from the get-go — why should downloadable movies offer any less viewing time than a DVD rented from Blockbuster? It should be a three-day or seven-day window, period. But at least you no longer have to rent the movie a second time, at full price, to watch just the last 15 minutes.
The most interesting development, however, has just arrived: a free software upgrade that permits the Vudu box to play movies in a new movie-quality level called HDX. It’s a reaction to all the websites, cable companies and satellite services whose “hi-def” movies don’t look nearly as good as they should because they are so heavily compressed.
The HDX versions of Vudu movies are insanely sharp; they make standard films look blurry and washed-out by comparison. It’s like seeing a movie on VHS video and DVD side by side.
In the HDX Rambo, for example, the banding was gone from the hazy, humid Thailand skies, and you can see nuanced detail in the night-time river shots that are simply black in standard definition.
To see why HDX looks so good, especially on big screens, check its data rate, a measure of how much information is used to describe each frame of the video. It averages around nine megabits a second, but spikes to 20 during action scenes. Compare that with Vudu standard definition: (2.2 megabits a second), Vudu and Apple TV high definition (4), regular DVD (8) or Blu-ray DVD (40). In other words, HDX quality is somewhere between DVD and Blu-ray. The audio offers a 40% improvement, too.
Now, the truth is, the most gigantic quality leap on the Vudu was from standard definition to high definition. The additional quality leap to HDX is not nearly as remarkable.
Furthermore, these gigantic movie files don’t play instantly on the Vudu, as its other movies do; you have to wait as long as three hours before you can start playback. That’s quite a crimp in the Vudu’s trump card. Fortunately, Vudu’s website lets you start the downloading process before you even get home — a slick trick.
In other words, HDX is really intended to satisfy the quality chaser, the purist. These are the people who paid dearly for top-of-the-line 1080p TV sets, capable of displaying 1080 fine horizontal lines that are blasted to the screen simultaneously, even though there’s not a single TV broadcast available in that format.
The Vudu joins a very small set of video sources that can feed those 1080p sets the signal they crave, such as Blu-ray DVD and some games for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. Better yet, HDX sends out a 24-frames-per-second signal. Because movies themselves are filmed at 24 frames per second, you supposedly get a smoother picture.
At introduction, only 65 Vudu HDX movies are available. However, all new movies sent to the box from now on (10 to 20 a week) will also be available in HDX. A rental costs 6 for HDX, versus 2 to 4 for standard-def movies.
In other words, the Vudu box keeps getting better. If you’re a movie nut, you should consider Vudu’s juicy brand of instant movie gratification. Or consider the Apple TV, which offers a similar movie system. Its base model costs less (230), does more (plays music, photos and videos from your computer) and offers twice as many hi-def movies (600 versus the Vudu’s 300).
On the other hand, the Vudu has more movies (6000 versus 2500); more storage (250 versus 40 gigabytes on the base model Apple TV); better movie-finding features; a remote that works through walls and cabinets; and higher definition (1080p instead of 720p), not to mention HDX. As for the price: if you buy a Vudu from Best Buy by December 31, your first 200 worth of movies are free. That should help.
The only real cause for pause, actually, is that Vudu is a start-up company. If it goes under, you wind up with a 300 doorstop. That’s what happened to the roughly similar MovieLink box, despite backers such as Disney, Intel and Cisco.
But Vudu asserts that it’s doing fine — it just got 46-million in venture capital — and will arrive in Best Buy this week. And in the complex matrix of desirable features — broad movie selection, prompt movie availability, reasonable pricing, high quality, instant playback and so on — the Vudu box scores very highly indeed.
Now if Hollywood would just get its own act together. Once it starts offering more movies, sooner, with less obnoxious rental terms, the concept of downloadable Internet movies won’t be a bad joke.— ©(2008) New York Times News Service
So why hasn’t the Vudu become more of a hit? You know, apart from the fact that there’s been no advertising? After all, it trumps services such as CinemaNow and MovieLink because the movies play on your TV, not your computer. It beats HBO and Showtime because you pay by the movie, not by the month, and recent movies become available much sooner. (Vudu movies become available for sale on the Vudu the same day they’re out on DVD. They generally become available for 24-hour rental 30 days later. Except for Warner movies, which are rentable on day one. Go, Warner!)
And it’s better than driving back and forth to the video store because — well, because you don’t have to drive back and forth to the video store.
Of course, plenty of people would argue that DVD-by-mail services like Netflix and Blockbuster Online are still the way to go. They offer just about every movie ever made, impose no viewing deadlines and charge a flat fee for nearly unlimited movies on DVD. The catch: they’re still not instant.
You have to wait for each DVD to come in the mail. And any Netflix subscriber can tell you what a bummer it is to crash onto the couch after a hard day, only to realise that all you’ve got on hand from Netflix are two depressing war documentaries.
In any case, Vudu has quietly been making the deal even better. The price has been reduced by 100 and many movies are now available in high definition. The company has also added a channel for sex movies — a cynical ploy for success if there ever was one — and an accompanying parental-controls screen. Another recent enhancement: you can extend a Vudu rental for a second day for 1.
The 24-hour window is absurd from the get-go — why should downloadable movies offer any less viewing time than a DVD rented from Blockbuster? It should be a three-day or seven-day window, period. But at least you no longer have to rent the movie a second time, at full price, to watch just the last 15 minutes.
The most interesting development, however, has just arrived: a free software upgrade that permits the Vudu box to play movies in a new movie-quality level called HDX. It’s a reaction to all the websites, cable companies and satellite services whose “hi-def” movies don’t look nearly as good as they should because they are so heavily compressed.
The HDX versions of Vudu movies are insanely sharp; they make standard films look blurry and washed-out by comparison. It’s like seeing a movie on VHS video and DVD side by side.
In the HDX Rambo, for example, the banding was gone from the hazy, humid Thailand skies, and you can see nuanced detail in the night-time river shots that are simply black in standard definition.
To see why HDX looks so good, especially on big screens, check its data rate, a measure of how much information is used to describe each frame of the video. It averages around nine megabits a second, but spikes to 20 during action scenes. Compare that with Vudu standard definition: (2.2 megabits a second), Vudu and Apple TV high definition (4), regular DVD (8) or Blu-ray DVD (40). In other words, HDX quality is somewhere between DVD and Blu-ray. The audio offers a 40% improvement, too.
Now, the truth is, the most gigantic quality leap on the Vudu was from standard definition to high definition. The additional quality leap to HDX is not nearly as remarkable.
Furthermore, these gigantic movie files don’t play instantly on the Vudu, as its other movies do; you have to wait as long as three hours before you can start playback. That’s quite a crimp in the Vudu’s trump card. Fortunately, Vudu’s website lets you start the downloading process before you even get home — a slick trick.
In other words, HDX is really intended to satisfy the quality chaser, the purist. These are the people who paid dearly for top-of-the-line 1080p TV sets, capable of displaying 1080 fine horizontal lines that are blasted to the screen simultaneously, even though there’s not a single TV broadcast available in that format.
The Vudu joins a very small set of video sources that can feed those 1080p sets the signal they crave, such as Blu-ray DVD and some games for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. Better yet, HDX sends out a 24-frames-per-second signal. Because movies themselves are filmed at 24 frames per second, you supposedly get a smoother picture.
At introduction, only 65 Vudu HDX movies are available. However, all new movies sent to the box from now on (10 to 20 a week) will also be available in HDX. A rental costs 6 for HDX, versus 2 to 4 for standard-def movies.
In other words, the Vudu box keeps getting better. If you’re a movie nut, you should consider Vudu’s juicy brand of instant movie gratification. Or consider the Apple TV, which offers a similar movie system. Its base model costs less (230), does more (plays music, photos and videos from your computer) and offers twice as many hi-def movies (600 versus the Vudu’s 300).
On the other hand, the Vudu has more movies (6000 versus 2500); more storage (250 versus 40 gigabytes on the base model Apple TV); better movie-finding features; a remote that works through walls and cabinets; and higher definition (1080p instead of 720p), not to mention HDX. As for the price: if you buy a Vudu from Best Buy by December 31, your first 200 worth of movies are free. That should help.
The only real cause for pause, actually, is that Vudu is a start-up company. If it goes under, you wind up with a 300 doorstop. That’s what happened to the roughly similar MovieLink box, despite backers such as Disney, Intel and Cisco.
But Vudu asserts that it’s doing fine — it just got 46-million in venture capital — and will arrive in Best Buy this week. And in the complex matrix of desirable features — broad movie selection, prompt movie availability, reasonable pricing, high quality, instant playback and so on — the Vudu box scores very highly indeed.
Now if Hollywood would just get its own act together. Once it starts offering more movies, sooner, with less obnoxious rental terms, the concept of downloadable Internet movies won’t be a bad joke.— ©(2008) New York Times News Service
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