6 Pop Songs Great for Audio Demos
Worst DIY Installs Ever Part 7
10 Must-Have Products for Your Next Install
6 Amazing High-End Home Theaters
Print
Email
Comments (2)
Share
LG Brings Vudu On-Demand to NetCast HDTVs
Vudu movies will be available on LG's LH50 1080p LCDs, which already offer Netflix streaming, and PS80 plasmas. Existing owners of those TVs will also be able to stream Vudu movies.
Users will be able to buy or rent HD and HDX films on an interface that is promising no delays or slow buffering. There's also instant fast forward, rewind and instant start, and Dolby Digital Plus 5.1 surround sound.
Vizio, which has no monthly fees, seems to be popping up everywhere lately. Not only was Vudu recently added to Vizio's Connected HDTVs, the company now also: LG plans to roll out Vudu streaming on future Broadband HDTV models. And with LG streaming Netflix on its BD300 Blu-ray Player, it only seems logical for Vudu streaming to be added to Blu-ray players as well.
Subscribe to the CE Pro Newsletter
Read more Digital Media stories
Dish Network Auto Hop Skips Commercials on Hopper DVRWarner Bros. 1080p Movies Available on iTunes
Microsoft Dumps Media Center, DVD Playback in Windows 8
Can Ceton Rejuvenate Windows Media Center, Extenders?
Audiophiles & the Masses Deserve the Best Quality
More in Digital Media
Article Topics
News · Product News · Displays · Video Sources · Digital Media · Video Sources ·About the Author
2 Comments (displayed in order by date/time)
Just saw a video demonstration posted on another site, I will re-share my comment here.
For existing VUDU box owners or those familiar with the service we see several new items in this short video.
1) I dont think the LG or Vizio display remotes have a scroll wheel so that means navigating with up, down, left right. It’s not bad, but one of the best parts of VUDU was the simple and fast navigation with the rf scroll wheel remote.
2) HDX movies were able to play instantly. Previously this was not an option even if you had a 50mbps connection.
3) Instant playback may have been possible because they mention the quality was degraded for slower connections. This was never the case with VUDU before as the quality was always fixed and it would just download to the hard drive until enough had been downloaded to seamlessly playback the entire movie.
4) Chapter selection and graphical FFWD/REW. Chapters were never available on the traditional VUDU box.
These features show that VUDU is moving away from its most unique feature, the proprietary peer network. It now looks to be a completely streaming solution with possibly no internal hard drive, hence the need for dynamically adjusting PQ to the available bandwidth and the need for chapter skipping.
The beauty of the peer network was its scalability over a traditional server/client streaming model, originally VUDU did not have to maintain giant server farms and large scale content delivery networks, theoretically allowing it to grow to million of videos including TV, sports, etc.
It’s interesting to watch things evolve, hopefully it’s for the better as I do love the VUDU service.
This is interesting, the fact that you can purchase movies and utilize HDX indicates that the display has an internal hard drive.
The earlier Vizio announcement did not include HDX streaming nor peer functionality because it lacked internal storage.