Vudu (U.S.-only) is to offer new Disney HD releases for purchase through its set-top box movie service on the same “day and date” as their competing DVD/Blu-ray release. It’s the first time that Disney has broadly licensed its content in HD for sale through an online video service, beyond one-off offerings or ‘rental-only’, says Vudu. Alongside new releases, 60 library films are also being added to Vudu’s ‘for purchase’ HD catalog. Disney chose to work with Vudu, says the company, “in large part because of the [picture] quality” offered by the service.
Interestingly, Steve Jobs, the guy who runs Apple, is also Disney’s majority shareholder after the motion picture company bought animation studio Pixar a few years back. Therefore, I wonder how long it will be before iTunes secures the same access to Disney’s HD library as Vudu, if it hasn’t already.
We already knew that Vudu’s future lies outside of its own set-top box. The Internet TV startup said as much in what looked like a change of strategy following a recent round of layoffs. Rather than punting the online video store via its own hardware alone, Vudu announced plans to “piggyback” third-party devices, including Internet-connected TVs, DVD players and other kinds of set-top boxes. And today, the first of those partnerships was unveiled.
No longer a ‘one trick pony’, Vudu’s ambition to become a fully-fledged platform, capable of pulling in content from a range of third-party services, appears to be bearing fruit.
Today the company announced that owners of its set-top box now have access to Internet radio service Pandora. Features include support for multiple Pandora accounts, “enabling every member of the family to play his or her own personalized Pandora stations”, along with the ability to create custom stations and tweak them dynamically by thumbing tracks up or down.
Set-top box movie service Vudu claimed a first today, offering download to-own movies in HD, albeit with a very limited catalog and high prices.
Previously, the company (like its competitors, which include Apple and Microsoft) offered HD content for rental only, but now customers can choose to pay between $13.99 and $23.99 to actually own the movies they download, which can be either stored on their Vudu hard drives or on the company’s own servers through its Vudu Vault ‘backup’ service. The only studios to be on board so far, however, are independents FirstLook, Kino and Magnolia Pictures, who together will begin by offering just 50 titles (compared to the 1,400 HD movies that Vudu makes available for rental), including “War, Inc.”, “Transsiberian” and “Man on Wire”. Moving forward, each participating studio has agreed to license new releases for sale in HD through Vudu on the same day and date as their DVD release.
Limited content aside, Vudu’s pricing remains too high, a problem not specific to the service but one that the company has failed to address nonetheless. As Streaming Media’s Dan Rayburn writes, it’s probably not Vudu’s fault, as the pricing will have been dictated by the studios themselves. Either way, as far as consumers are concerned, downloads of any sort – even in HD – shouldn’t cost the same or more than the DVD equivalent. And the issue is further compounded when you factor in that Vudu’s use of a proprietary video format (however high quality) and its copy-protection scheme means that content can’t be moved to other devices and is completely reliant on the company staying in business, which in the nascent market of video downloads is far from guaranteed.
February 10th, 2009 | Posted in Net TV | Comments Off
It feels like deja vu. Set-top movie service Vudu has slashed its prices again. The entry level Vudu box can now be purchased for $149 (down from $295), and this time without any kind of mail in rebate. That said, the box still doesn’t feature built-in WiFi connectivity, so the company has also “slashed” the price of its optional wireless kit to $79. Add the two together and the price is a less enticing $228.
Of course, any price cut is a welcome one and, slowly but surely, Vudu is getting closer to the ‘feels like free’ price point that I’ve argued is needed if the service is ever to go mass market. For that to happen, however, here’s what else Vudu needs to do…
Despite making its own range of set-top boxes, including two high end devices aimed at home theatre enthusiasts, Vudu’s future ultimately lies outside of building its own hardware, says the company.
“We’re a software company first and foremost,” Vudu co-founder Tony Miranz tells CEPro.com. The set-top movie box service had to design and manufacture its own hardware in order to sell the concept to third-party consumer electronics companies, says Miranz. The plan now is to “try to piggyback on TVs, DVD players and other classes of devices.”
December 16th, 2008 | Posted in Net TV | Comments Off
My biggest beef with the Vudu set-top movie box is that it’s always been a one trick pony, and an expensive one at that. Focusing on paid-for movies (rentals and to-own), Vudu’s sole proposition was that you purchased one of its set-top boxes, starting at $299, so that you could begin purchasing content. Essentially paying to enter the store.
That changed today, with the company announcing support for a range of free online video from YouTube, MSNBC, CNN, MTV, PBS, and National Geographic, as well as images from photo sharing sites Flickr and Picasso. “The new content will be available via a free firmware update that should hit all Vudu boxes over the next 24 hours”, reports Cnet. And best of all there’s plenty more to come.
That’s because Vudu isn’t providing access to said content through formal licensing agreements but is instead pulling in content through those sites’ own APIs or freely available web feeds. Better still, Vudu is going to open up this feature to third-party developers in the first half of 2009 who’ll be able to add support for more online content.
In other words, Vudu looks like it might be slowly morphing, to some extent at least, into the open Apple TV I’ve been long calling for.
November 17th, 2008 | Posted in Net TV | Comments Off
Set-top box movie service Vudu already targets the home theater crowd with its higher end XL offering, but now the company is taking up a notch with the release of the Vudu XL2.
Described as being “designed specifically for professional home theater installations”, the XL2 sports an aluminum case that houses a 1U rack mountable unit, uses the “highest quality components”, and like its XL sibling, features a terabyte of storage — enough to store more than 500 standard definition movies. Other high end features include IP and IR control to allow the XL2 to be integrated into “most high-end home control systems”, along with 1080i HD output over component, and the ability to route and switch HD signals through the home with the use of off-the-shelf video switchers. The result, says Vudu’s Tony Miranz, makes the XL2 a home theater installer’s “weapon of choice”. At a premium price, of course.
The Vudu XL2 will be listed at $1,299 and is available today exclusively through more than 1,000 Vudu-certified custom installers, says the company.
It’s interesting to see Vudu continue to pursue the high end home theater market, a natural fit, in terms of the company’s recent focus on HD content. It also helps to differentiate Vudu’s offering, on a hardware level at least, from competitors such as TiVo, Apple and Microsoft. But does that make it the right strategy?
Set-top box movie service Vudu is claiming to offer more High Definition content than any of its competitors — Apple TV, Netflix, XBox 360, and even Blu-Ray itself — reports CNet. And while content is mostly King, I’m still unsure about the company’s business model.
From CNet:
Indeed, a quick examination of competing services seems to bear out Vudu’s claim. We counted more than 1,100 HD movies available through Vudu’s box (including about 200 that are also offered in Vudu’s Blu-rayesque HDX format), compared to 391 on Xbox Live Marketplace, and something south of 700 on Apple iTunes. (Netflix will be kicking off its own HD streaming service later this month with a mere 300 titles.) By comparison, Amazon’s Blu-ray inventory–i.e. the total number of Blu-rays available–shows a total of close to 2,000 titles, though that includes TV shows and pre-release discs.
However, while Vudu’s catalog clearly beats its Internet set-top box rivals, along with holding its own against the fledgling Bu-ray format, there’s little to distinguish the service in terms of pricing – rentals range from $0.99 to $5.99, and purchased movies range from $4.99 to $19.99.
In fact, when you consider that the Vudu set-top box is a one trick pony compared to most of its direct competitors who also offer various additional functionality, such as gaming or the ability to bridge the gap between the PC and TV, the Vudu proposition appears to deliver a lot less value for money: buy our hardware ($299) so that you can start purchasing our wares. It’s like charging people to enter the store. Instead, Vudu should find a way of giving its set-top box away for free or at least making consumers feel like they’re not paying for the box.
August 13th, 2008 | Posted in Net TV | Comments Off
As if porn wasn’t enough to differentiate itself from competitors, this time Vudu (see our early review) has cheapened its set-top box movie service in the right way by offering heavily discounted rentals through its newly launched “99 for 99″ movie channel.
As the name suggests, 99 movies will be on offer priced at just 99 cents per rental. Titles will be “personally” chosen by Vudu’s “in-house movie expert” Steven Horn, and will include both recent releases and “classics”, with selections rotated each week.
August 5th, 2008 | Posted in Net TV | Comments Off
Pornography has always been a technology trendsetter — it stood on the VHS side of the videotape wars, was an innovator in streaming video content over the Internet, and was responsible for early breakthroughs for using credit cards as payment for Web transactions.
But no matter pornography’s contribution to technology, it’s mostly been relegated to the back room, out of sight, and rarely seen mingling with traditional, less “blue” content on mainstream devices.
That’s changing as Vudu, the set-top box that connects to a television and enables you to download and watch video content using a broadband connection, has signed a partnership deal with AVN Media Network.
Vudu owners can download content from a new AVN channel — the first stand-along content channel on Vudu. The AVN Channel will feature standard and high-definition content from well-known adult video studios such as Wicked, Vivid, and Hustler.
Standard definition movies can be rented for $6.99 and purchased for $19.99. High definition content costs $8.99 to rent, $29.99 to buy.
Adult video content has been included alongside mainstream content on hotel-room set-top boxes and on cable or satellite TV pay-per-view channels. There’s even a dedicated set-top box for the adult industry from FyreTV.
But the Vudu-AVN partnership has the potential to bring into the home, on the same device the family watches the latest Hollywood movies, a stunning amount of adult content in maybe too much detail.
Good thing there’s a slew of parental controls. You wouldn’t want little Johnny stumbling upon “Red Hot Chili Sex” and think it’s a movie about the Red Hot Chili Peppers.
I’ve often wondered this, but my math skills suck. How big of an impact is Internet-delivered video really making in the consumer living room?
Dan Rayburn, the EVP of StreamingMedia.com and the blogger behind BusinessofVideo.com, crunched numbers in a post for GigaOm today and decided that the impact is not nearly as large as we think.
“While it is good to see more content options coming to consumers, adding up all of the install numbers for these devices gives a stark picture of just how small the install base really is,” Rayburn wrote. “The market is still too fragmented, with too many different devices, all limited by a lack of premium content.”
Rayburn bases his analysis on market penetration rates. His point is that the best technologies don’t always win — it’s what consumers adopt. The numbers for TV-connected devices are interesting.
Set-top box movie service Vudu claimed a first today, offering download to-own movies in HD, albeit with a very limited catalog and high prices.
Despite making its own range of set-top boxes, including two high end devices 
Set-top box movie service Vudu already targets the home theater crowd with its 
As if 
Pornography has always been a technology trendsetter — it stood on the VHS side of the videotape wars, was an innovator in streaming video content over the Internet, and was responsible for early breakthroughs for using credit cards as payment for Web transactions.
Vudu owners can download content from a new AVN channel — the first stand-along content channel on Vudu. The AVN Channel will feature standard and high-definition content from well-known adult video studios such as Wicked, Vivid, and Hustler.
I’ve often wondered this, but my math skills suck. How big of an impact is Internet-delivered video really making in the consumer living room?
