LG BD390 Blu-ray Player to Add Vudu Streaming

BD390 will be able to stream Vudu, Netflix, CinemaNow, and YouTube.

LG BD390 Blu-ray Player will add Vudu streaming via a firmware upgrade later in September.

Sep
11

By Arlen Schweiger
Filed in: News, Product News, CEDIA, Blu-ray, Digital Media
Print | Email | RSS Feed

09.11.2009 — LG Electronics and on-demand movie rental service Vudu are covering their bases pretty well these days.

LG announced at CEDIA Expo 2009 that it's adding Vudu to its full-featured BD390 Blu-ray player via a firmware upgrade later in September.

That just adds to the crazy amount of video streaming and viewing options available on the wireless BD390 ($399), which can also stream YouTube, Netflix, and CinemaNow. It also supports networked video files and, of course, 1080p high-def Blu-rays and regular ol' DVDs.

For Vudu, it gives the service a pretty nice trifecta of recent partnership activity — we’ll count the one it already had with LG. Prior to CEDIA, the company had announced it would be able to stream its videos (plus other services it features such as Pandora web radio and Flickr photo sharing) directly from the latest LG and Mitsubishi networked televisions.

The Netflix and CinemaNow services are nice for the BD390, but Netflix's high-definition offerings in its "Watch Instantly" service don’t measure up to Vudu’s 2,200 HD offerings, which include 1080p video and Dolby Digital Plus 5.1 surround audio selections.

Lemme guess: we'll see Amazon's video-on-demand service on the BD390 next.

Comments

Posted by Mail DVD Rentals on 09/18 at 11:07 PM

What you might see on Black Friday are pack-ins that cost more than a system by itself but ultimately less than all the included items combined had they been bought separately
Mail DVD Rentals

Posted by Confused on 10/13 at 05:02 AM

I am a little confused and frustrated by my new LG Blu-Ray Player and
the online video services it contains.
You Tube: fun, free, but the quality is really bad, lots of
blockiness, and it stops to buffer often painful.

NetFlix: Free for 2 two weeks – Not sure I will continue when I
have to pay. Again the quality is bad, it is blocky, it takes a long
time to start, when I fast forward it is weird and then it buffers for
30 seconds to a minute. Then some times the video stops and has to
buffer because it is “adjusting quality” and then it gets
Blocky…Frustrating is how I feel about NetFlix.

CinemaNow: This is a good quality but the problem is I have to pay
for videos. In fact I would say the quality is great it is better
than DVD and my Comcast service. I notice that it starts up fast and
I never had it “buffer” and I have never seen it “adjust
quality” picture is crisp. It would be great if this had free
content or subscription like Netflix.

Vudu: Again expensive. The picture quality is great but the video
constantly stops to buffer. I was unable to watch a single movie too
painful.

I assume all these services use HTTP (ergo buffering).

Why do most of these have buffering problems I thought all of these
service have dynamic bitrate?

Why is CinemaNow so much better ?

Are some adaptive streaming better than others?

Can you clear this up?