Vudu Slashes Hardware Prices by 50%, Compensates Dealers

Pretty hard price cutting… 40% to 50%.

I would tread lightly into the Vudu waters.  They may be readying to get rid of inventory before closing shop.

Plus if your ISP is starting bandwidth caps, I would stay away for this reason:
Vudu’s little secret is that it is a P2P system meaning that once a title is in the wild on your box Vudu will use your box and your ISP bandwidth to provide content to other subscribers.

Sorry Vudu, but I think you are done.  The only way to truly get the best HD quality right now and for the forseeable future is Blu-ray.

I don’t think I would call VUDU’s proprietary, secure peer network “VUDUs little Secret” it is mentioned in most reviews and addressed in three popular FAQs on their website.

Unless you are on a satellite connection or something you would literally need to rent like 20 HDX titles a month to surpass most common bandwidth caps.

CaW to respond to your comment:

As to why they cut prices, everyone can guess, but it is obvious that Vudu is not closing shop.  At worst, as far as I can imagine, they may discontinue making boxes only to OEM them in TV’s Blu-Ray players etc.

They way that Vudu does their P2P is off of like ISP’s.  So if you are on a Comcast ISP, it will only search for other Vudu boxes on the Comcast network.  All other P2P’s are hated by the ISP’s becuase they have to pay every time info goes from their ISP to another like AT&T;for example.  Also with the compression video comes in at, you would have to watch 30+ HDX titles to be limited, and at maximum upload it is not more then 250mb if i remember correctly.

Lastly, when it comes to picture quality, Blu-Ray really is no better then Vudu’d HDX.  Technically they are the same, both 1920x1080P at 24fps.  Side by side, they really are impossible to tell apart when it comes to video quality.  However it is obvious that the sound quality options are more available with Blu-Ray, but I’ll take a larger on demand library any day.

I do not see Vudu going anywhere but up.  They have the trust of all the major studios, and as it says above, are looking into OEM.  Imagine a TV, Blu-Ray player, Xbox, etc. with Vudu built in…

To Vudu Fan,

I can pay once for a BD with 1080p24 and LOSSLESS audio.  With FooYou, you don’t have the option of paying once for HD(time limited rental only).  I can get 4 BD titles/month for less than $10 on BlockbusterTotalAccess.  4 VuDu HD titles cost $24 plus they are time limited.

Sorry I’ll stick with physical media where I have the option of paying once and renting with out being tied to one company’s unproven proprietary solution.

BTW, just because Vudu says its 1080p24 does not mean its Blu-ray quality.  It’s just marketing.

Sorry but 40% to 50% off smacks of a firesale to me. 

Of course Vudu is going to talk up their product.  Remember HD DVD, Toshiba was talking that colossal failure up even at WHV dropped them like a bad habit.  A month later all of the rheoteric was gone and they admitted defeat.

In this economy, Vudu is trouble and it needs backers.

CaW, I would agree if you were comparing VUDU’s Instant HD to Blu-ray but the recently released HDX rentals from VUDU are Blu-ray quality video.
The isntant HD on VUDU I would equate to HD quality of DirecTV, the VUDU HDX content is Blu-ray quality. Read one of the many reviews of HDX content and you will be hard pressed to find anyone complaining.

The audio is not loss-less but it is 640kbps DD 5.1 which is the same bit rate Blu-ray uses for Dolby Digital soundtracks. Obviously TrueHD is available on Blu-ray and not VUDU but better than DVD quality.

I understand where you are coming from, I love buying Blu-ray discs but people buy VUDU for the incredible convenience it offers. I’ll give you an example, I have 600 movies stored on Kaleidescape at home, I have 60 Blu-ray discs and 30 HD-DVDs that I can play on my Niveus Media Server. Needless to say, when I have guests at my home I have a lot of movies for us to choose from. What really wins out though is when I tell them to choose from one of 12,000 movies available on VUDU at DVD or Blu-ray quality. I don’t know anyone who has 12,000 movies instantly available in DVD or Blu-ray quality with an elegant and powerful interface, unless they have VUDU.

I don’t know if the company will survive, I sure hope they do and I hope to see the service available to other devices such as Vista Media Center. But just because VUDU doesn’t fit your particular needs, doesn’t mean the product will fail or that it sucks.

VUDU does not offer 12,000 HD titles.  Vudu does not allow outright purchase of HD titles.  Vudu’s “BD quality” is just a marketing gimmick.

With Blu and a rental plan like BB or Netflix gives me access to pretty much every title released to the format.  Sure I might not get instant gratification, but I know that I am not tied to system that could just be turned off overnight.  What happens with that SD content purchased outright?  Well history has shown that the consumer is SOL.

For all that instant content you are bragging about, remember that VUDU’s primary competitor in this market is Satellite and CableOnDemand.

With my Comcast box, I have 100s of free movies in SD and probably 30 or so free HD titles at one time, not to mention the newer titles I can pay for.  It’s the top 20 that drive the revenue stream.  So for all that content Vudu offers I wonder how many of those unique 12,000 titles have actually been downloaded?

Vudu’s system is intriguing but we have seen other proprietary STB systems fail, and to be quite frank, in this economy the proprietary DL industry is due for a shakeup. 

For all the crap we heard about HD DVD v. BD, on the download landscape we have, Vudu v. Apple v. Netflix v. Amazon v. CableOnDemand v. SatOnDemand v. ISPs with enforced caps.

If you thought HD DVD v. BD was confusing, the DL industry right now is a flustercuck.  Until there is a clear standard that makes it easy so that ownership is not tied to a proprietary implementation, DL hype is nothing but smoke and mirrors.

VUDU will certainly become another passing novelty, that we will talk about in a few years.  NetFlix already has a huge established customer base, and “as J6P goes, so goes the world”.  Combine that with Players embedded into new BD Players, then VUDU is just another niche gadget that nobody needs or wants.

If and when Netflix has deals with every major studio for their on demand content, if and when they have new Hollywood releases available instantly the day they come out or soon after and if and when Netflix supports 10mbit 1080p 24 with 640kbps DD5.1 Then yes I would agree with you.

Remember this is CEPRO, not avsforum, the average CEDIA customer wants quality, ease of use and selection, they don’t necessarily care that it costs a few bucks more, as long as it looks good and works. In that regard there is nothing out there that comes close to VUDU.

And to CAW, in side by side comparisons of Vudu HDX vs. Blu-ray, few people could tell the difference. It’s not marketing hype, its absolutely true. In my own home I have compared the same movie on Blu-ray and VUDU HDX on a 10ft screen with a Vidikron projector and they were equal in quality. I work in this industry so it’s not like I’m some moron who doesnt know what to look for.

The fact that you rely on Comcast for HD pretty much discredits you as a reliable source, they have the worst picture quality I have ever seen and their on demand HD catalog is extremely weak.

I get the distinct impression that you are not the target demographic, and certainly not the average CEDIA customer looking to spend decent money to get world class solutions from the professionals that this site caters to.

VUDU may very well fail in this economy, I hope they do not but times are tough. But I defy you to name another solution that has thousands of titles instantly on demand at the same quality that VUDU offers. AppleTV is a distant second.

I suppose we must agree to disagree.

BTW, I have a projector set up with a large screen.

To me the typical CEDIA customer is a moron who overspends.  In this ecomony good luck to overpriced CEDIA business.

To CaW: “In this economy good luck to overpriced CEDIA business.”  Then leave this forum now! 

It’s called CE-PRO, perhaps you need to be visiting http://www.circuitcity.com—oh, that’s right, they are gone, sorry!

To CEDIA MAN,

“It’s called CE-PRO, perhaps you need to be visiting http://www.circuitcity.com—oh, that’s right, they are gone, sorry!”

Just like the CEDIA installers that never planned for a rainy day.