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Vudu Set-Top Box Weds Legal P2P and HD Movies
prostoalex writes "The New York Times is running a story on a Silicon Valley company that is planning to revolutionize the movie business. It's no secret that the movie-going experience has been deteriorating, while the number of HDTVs sold has been rising steadily. A company called Vudu, run by a guy who started TiVo, is now building a box for peer-to-peer download of movies straight from the studios. That could enables the movie studios to make movies securely available to viewers on the day of release, and improves on the download experience offered by other shops, like Amazon Unbox, MovieLink and others: 'DVD sales began to stagnate because studios had finally plowed through their entire backlog of movies that could be released on the shiny discs. The success of iTunes was also proving that the digital transition was inevitable and that one powerful player, Apple, could control the market if Hollywood did not find other viable partners. And outlaw services like the pirate Web sites that use BitTorrent technology demonstrated that digital piracy, which had consumed the music business first, now posed a real problem for Hollywood.'"
Can somebody tell me how long will it take to hack into this box and reuse the code in some PC apps?
I don't think film studios are going to be particularly happy and enthusiastic about it. Plus of course it will need to use DRM. Which one? Most of them are already broken, or will be in not-so-long time. And royalties will need to go to someone.
As always, idea is brilliant, but there's a chance that MPIA will block it before it actually starts. They're just too scared of any new technologies...
Just my 2c.
"an experienced, industrious, ambitious, and often, quite often, picturesque liar" - Mark Twain
Vudu seems to be a copy of Apple TV. It has a similar-sized box with a similar aesthetic, and an equally sparse remote. What it adds over the Apple TV seems to be direct download without a computer, and a composite video out. There's also no mention of podcast support, which is the real innovation from the Apple TV, in my mind.
Am I missing something? Is this really revolutionary? (Not that the Apple TV is either, but it's probably the best-known set-top box with podcast support.)
According to market analysist Nicholas Donatiello Jr quoted in the article, the ball park could be $300 for the box and between $6 adn $10 per movie. But they didn't touch on the bandwidth/data costs to the user - and as they are going with a peer-to-peer system, each customer will be donating some of their upload bandwidth too (possibly even when not watching a movie).
while the number of HDTVs sold has been rising steadily.
I see statements like that and wonder if it is truely rising or if it's just that HDTVs are comming down steadily in price and so rather than wanting a HDTV they just buy the best set of features (aka what the sales guy says) which happens to be the latest TV. This would explain why more HDTVs are slowly being sold while the interest level (as far as I can see) is very low even among people with HDTV consoles which would benefit from them.
But I suppose HDTV is much like Vista. We have no real control over the market, we have a market for both (HDTV and normal TVs/Vista and XP) until the makers decide the pull the plug and we're forced to one option even if we hate it.
I like muppets.
Their box is planning to upload HDTV vids through average people's internet connection? Most people have enough downloading, thank you. Something tells me QoS routers will get very popular if this catches on. P2P is a great way to "chip in" your bandwidth without actually setting up a central system. If you've set up a central system already, bandwidth is much cheaper and more available centrally than it is for me. With my DSL line I'm basicly capped at whatever they are able to deliver, and I hardly think I'm alone in that. The marginal price for me to have another Mbit of upload capacity is ca. infinite, or at least some ungodly expensive business connection. Easynews offers 20GB download for $10, which is about the same infrastructure Vudu would need to have. I'd easily rather pay 10$ to Vudu than upload 20GB over my connection.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
From TFA: "It has built a small Internet-ready movie box that connects to the television and allows couch potatoes to rent or buy any of the 5,000 films now in Vudu's growing collection. The box's biggest asset is raw speed: the company says the films will begin playing immediately after a customer makes a selection." Two points. One, the article also makes note of the rise in HDTV sets - if that's indeed the case, wouldn't one selling point be the opportunity to offer movies in some fairly high-definition format (at LEAST DVD-quality)? Even for folks with broadband, most won't have the bandwith to pull down a DVD-or-better quality movie quickly enough to watch in real-time. The other point is the "rent or buy" verbiage - what defines 'renting' or 'buying' (normally I'd only have to ask what defines renting, but considering how the major movie/music studios have handled DRM, one must include buying in that request)? When the article says renting, do they mean along similar lines to what you might receive from a movie store, 3 days and then it goes away? Or do they mean something like purchasing a single viewing, along the lines of what you'd get in a movie theater - if the latter's the case, why the heck would I want to "rent" a new movie for almost the same price as going to see it in theaters? Even the best home setups really just can't compare to watching a movie at the theater, especially with some films being available at IMAX theaters and the like. This brings to light the question of the pricing scheme - new movies more costly than old? More popular movies have floating costs that increment with every X number of downloads? These are things I wouldn't put it past the MPAA to try and implement, and they'd spell a DOA right out of the gate for a service that's trying to supplant internet piracy. After all, you still just can't beat $Free.99 for price.
It's no secret that the movie-going experience has been deteriorating
How so? What has changed? Are the seats less comfy? Is the pop corn less crunchy? Is the sound less ugh-please-turn-the-bass-down-or-i-am-going-to-bar fy? Or is it that the home theater experience is improving with respect to the real theater experience so it makes you say it's deteriorating?
You just got troll'd!
So, pretty much like Aufero. Seems like it's still only available to alpha-testers, though. There are older alternatives for users of MythTV as well, but this one seems to push the envelope and personally I think Windows Media Center does feel like it's ahead of the game compared to MythTV.
Now, whether this is intended for legal content or not... I guess that should be seen as an exercise to the reader to determine.
(posting anon to not whore with a link)
Oh and "securely"? Maybe for the first two days after the service is released.
And outlaw services like the pirate Web sites that use BitTorrent technology demonstrated that digital piracy, which had consumed the music business first, now posed a real problem for Hollywood.
Which is crap on both fronts. Peer-to-peer has hardly "consumed" the music business, last I heard they were still in business and making money. Unless he means that P2P has consumed an unreasonable amount of attorney's fees lately. I'd agree with that.
This guy is just trying to make this appear to be a proactive solution to a problem the movie houses really aren't experiencing yet, hoping that one or more of them will jump on the bandwagon.
The success of iTunes was also proving that the digital transition was inevitable and that one powerful player, Apple, could control the market if Hollywood did not find other viable partners.
No, the success of iTunes has, if anything, taught the movie industry that the very last thing it wants is content distribution run by a high-powered technology company with both the money and the balls to tell the studios "here's the deal - take it or leave it."
Both the music and the movie industries have long shown themselves to be anti-technology control freaks. Unless they can own this technology they'll never go for it, and if they did own it they'd lock it down so tightly that we would never go for it.
I can't argue that the DVD was a phenomenal success, but that was because the average user wasn't left feeling too restricted. The reason he felt that way was because he generally just played his movies on his living room TV, and never needed to rip his data to some other format. That's changing, not to the level that music reproduction has changed but it's happening, and when enough people can't legally or practically move their movies to other devices the same problems will arise.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
I am already using a LAN based DVD player, http://www.neodigits.com/ so I can play DVDs as well as Divx etc downloads to my PC via P2P services, which it then upscales to my 1080p HD TV. The device is essentially a Linux-based dedicated PC, using a custom HTML/XML browser as a GUI. There are already quite a few products using this concept. I cannot see why the technology won't be available very soon to connect directly to a pay site. Admiteddly, one will need a pretty fast internet connection, but with a decent sized buffer, you should be able to stream HD movies directly.
It has already been pointed out that cinemas are on the decline, as we are forced to sit in pokey little multiplexes with peoples phones going off, talking through the movie and the cinema charging you a fortune not only to get in, but you need a credit card to buy a bar of chocolate. The video/DVD rental shops are also waning as the increase in P2P downloads and postal DVD rental diminishes the small shops. Even the likes of Blockbuster are starting to crumble.
What was once considered a pipe-dream to have a complete home entertainment and communications centre is rapidly appearing over the horizon.
"I like to skate on the other side of the ice"
Just as an example of some items I am unable to buy on DVD here in australia but would like to own:
Snow White (the pre-WW2 Disney classic)
The Real Ghostbusters (the 80s cartoon)
Tales Of The Gun (History Channel documentary series)
Other History Channel documentaries
Space Above And Beyond
Hey Dad (classic Aussie sitcom)
Even if you account for the fact that some of them (like some of the History Channel stuff) may in fact be available if you are willing to import from America, there are still plenty of movies and TV episodes that you just plain can't get legally on DVD or from ANY download service anywhere in the world.
This device sounds like a win for the MPAA/movie industry and a big loss for the consumer. Lets see how this device functions:
1. You have to buy an expensive box. Most services like this offer the device cheap or free. Satellite boxes, cable boxes, TIVOs, all are or can be free with service plans.
2. Peer-to-peer transfers. Sure, they say they are doing this to offer instantaneous availability of content, but it is just an excuse to shift the bandwidth cost to the end user. And, it doesn't just work exactly like BitTorrent. With BitTorrent, you are only uploading while the transfer takes place. This box uses every box as a source, all the time. If your box has a copy of a movie on it, it will upload it whenever someone else needs it. It doesn't sound like this service should be any more expensive than any other. If YouTube can afford to send me internet-quality video for the few pennies they get from my add revenues, Vudu can afford to send me DVD-quality video for the 10 bucks I'm paying them to buy their movie.
3. End-to-end DRM, vendor lock-in. This is why they're so popular with the studios. While freeing people from the "tyranny" of the computer, they simultaneously give up their best chance at circumventing draconian controls.
4. No DVD burner of any kind. This is the Achilles heel. They offer the option to "rent" or "purchase" downloads. For the 'rent' option, the file obviously deletes itself after a fixed amount of time. What about the movies I purchase? If it were on a computer I could make a backup copy on another hard drive or a DVD. With this, that option does not exist. The device's hard drive, however large, has a finite capacity. Once that fills up, whoops, what are you supposed to do? I guess you have to delete one of the movies you "bought." If they address this at all, they might let you re-download movies you delete. Regardless, it is at their discretion.
5. Bandwidth. Very few people have Ethernet jacks next to their television. For many people, this will leave wireless as their only option. With wireless, I would be skeptical of its ability to cope with the massive upload/download requirements. Even if it can cope, the necessity to either lay Ethernet cables down or configure a wireless network is completely antithetical towards the plug-and-play, instant gratification consumer they're targeting. They're trying to package a computer in a format your Luddite grandmother won't recognize as a computer, while simultaneously requiring her to configure a wireless network.
In summary, to use this system, I have to buy an expensive box, I have to pay for all the bandwidth, and I have absolutely no control over the files I download. This device is about one thing, control. Control of content and control of consumers.
As much as I would like to see no DRM, I will admit that Apple figured out how to do DRM right with iTunes. The basic principle they applied was, "we will make the new format no more restrictive than the old format." Like CDs, FairPlay lets you burn as many CD copies as you want of files. It also lets you back up your files to multiple computers. Vudu's box ties all of my purchases to the lifetime of a single piece of hardware, offering no backup solutions, total DRM, and a system that's designed to screw over the consumer at every single turn.
I hope this is not the way that the industry is going. I don't think the Vudu box will be a great success. However, they may still find enough people who want something that "just works" to find a market. Regardless, it will fall upon the usual legion, the modern fighters for freedom, the hackers and crackers to break the chains of DRM and vendor-lock in. It may be easier to crack something when it's on the computer, but being a stand-alone box hasn't saved the XBox, Playstations, and innumerable other devices from being opened in the same way.
Ultimately, the studios know this. They simply want the circumvention to be so difficult that 95% of users will not attemp
Whether they've realized it or not, Vudu has chosen the perfect name for their insidious little device. Let's compare the Vudu box with your average Voodoo witch doctor:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zombie
1. A witch doctor surrounds himself with pseudo-mystical obfuscation and claims to raise the dead. The Vudu box surrounds itself with pseudo-mystical obfuscation and claims to do the technologically impossible.
2. A witch doctor puts his victim in a death-like-state using a variety of poisons and venoms, resulting in the victim being buried alive. The Vudu box nearly kills the user with its initial cost and then proceeds to isolate the user from rest of the internet and humanity, resulting in his peers considering him dead.
3. A witch doctor revives the victim into a state of perpetual slavery, forcing them to work in a trance-like state for the profit of the witch doctor. The Vudu box constricts the power of the user down to a minimal level, and forces the user to give his bandwidth and work for Vudu in an endless state of vendor-slavery.
/Also, the movie service will have lots of Night of the Living Dead Movies
//Brains, Brains, BRAAAIINNSS!
Does it run a proprietary DRMed Linux?
I feel that they are a bit myopic here. Nice that they are trying to innovate, but what if some family likes to watch several movies in a month. HD movies will not be small files by any means, and will be a natural progression of the service I'm sure even though the article does not specifically state that they will be offering HD content. What if you download/watch several movies which you legally paid for and then get your cable cut off by companies like Comcast for exceeding their "magical" and hidden data transfer limit.
Even if they offer regular DVD content (not HD) they will more than likely compress the files to the point to where it is degraded and is not the same quality of a DVD I can rent for $3 at the local rental store. Why would I pay more for less quality? If they do feed the actual DVD files (dual layer, not compressed like a file you might get from illegal p2p) that goes back to the problem of massive files being transfered over your internet connection and the risk of getting cut off.
This service will be dipping into the pay-per-view funds of some cable companies giving them even more incentive to drop you from their service. They want your money and will not let someone else take it from you easily. Unless the cable companies and/or ISP's get a slice of the pie, I do not see this happening. Greed kills innovation more often than poor planning from a technical standpoint.
"This is America... where the will of the few outweigh the outrage of the many..." - Unknown
> DVD sales began to stagnate because studios had finally plowed through their entire backlog
> of movies that could be released on the shiny discs?
Bull-f*ing-shit!!! There are hundreds -- thousands -- of movies out there that I simply cannot buy on DVD!!! Where can I buy a DVD of "Hamburger: the Motion Picture"? How about a copy of "Stewardess School"? These are a couple of the funniest movies ever made, and are in my personal top ten.
Want to talk about copyright reform? How about a provision that any commercial product (book, DVD, etc.) that is allowed to remain out-of-print for ten years (maybe even five) years be automatically dumped into the Public Domain. Sort of a "Use it or lose it" copyright.
I would prefer buy a legal copy of something I want, but somehow I would feel ZERO GUILT at downloading a P2P copy of something a studio is sitting on in their vaults and just REFUSES to sell me.
Teen Angel - a Ghost Story
Movie studios are missing the point. DVD sales are slowing/stagnating not because their back catalogue has been released (it hasn't I'm sure) but by the overall PITA that is DVD viewing.
Find DVD on shelf amongsth the 1000s of others
Open box, fiddle with little plastic thingy that keeps disc secure
Insert DVD -> wait for drive to spin up ->
Wait for the DRM Copyright notice to go away (PITA) ->
Watch Disc manufacturers logo ->
(optionally sit through dozens of equally annoying, piss adverts or trailers that you can't skip)
Wait for piss poor "animated menus" to appear->
Press the button you want->
Watch equally pointless animated menu ->
Watch starting logo: Universal, fox, dreamworks etc. Yawn ->
Watch film, then put back in box and re-file.
Forget about the 2 or 3 other discs in the pack that give you tonnes of extras you'll never watch - forget about the DVD commentary (for all but you most treasured films) - Forget about the "great" interactive games included on the disc.
When will companies learn: people just want to watch the fucking film.
I'd buy one of these boxes, the moive thereters around here are kinda sketchy, I would love to have the guys over for a party, release screening of a summer blockbuster.
-Ours is the wisdom of Solomon, the magic of Merlyn, the fall of Icaris.
Hmm.
Hamburger: The Motion Picture, Stewardess School:
If you enjoyed this title, our database also recommends:
Bikini Drive-In, H.O.T.S., L.E.T.H.A.L. Ladies: Return to Savage Beach
Are you sure the movie companies aren't doing us all a favour by not releasing those 2 on DVD.??
On the other hand, you do have a point about copyright. The studios are more likely to provide a 'burn on demand' system though.
When are they going to figure this out?
We don't mind paying for content. But the ability to freely copy that content is a long-standing, essential part of the whole content "experience," and enables all sorts of add-ons to our enjoyment.
Maybe for Movie X I need to make zero copies. But for Movie Y, I want a backup that I can play in my (car/other locations/whatever). And for Movie Z, I want to make 20 copies for my sewing group. And for Movie ZZ, I want to mix and mash pieces I copied with excerpts from Movie X. And on and on and on...
"Consumers" aren't this singular, pay-once-view-once entity that they're trying to make us be. They're continually building square pegs for round holes. For as long as there has been "content," much of the value of the content has derived from its copyability.
NONE of these products will succeed until the manufacturer "gets" it, and builds free copyability right into the machine.
Sort of like, ummm, the PC.
My first reaction was: why should I provide free hosting for a commercial vendor of video? Let them pay for their own hosting and bandwidth.
But, come to think of it, if a service like this legitimizes large upstream bandwidth, we all win. One of the biggest threats to the Internet is still that upstream bandwidths become limited. So, from that point of view, I'm all for commercial P2P. I can still give its traffic low priority at the router.
http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/gizmodo-exclusive/exclu sive-pics-of-the-vudu-+-video-store-in-a-box-25604 4.php
Now they have completely eliminated the distribution cost... so are they going to pass the savings along? I doubt it.
Tell me - now that the "consumer" is literally doing the manufacture and distribution of the product, why the hell are we paying someone ELSE for the privilege?
Next you'll tell me I can't grow my own tomatoes from seeds from a grocery-store tomato. Oh wait, Monsanto is already saying that.
Oh, yeah, I forgot about "H.O.T.S." which was pretty good (a couple of sequels to it came up kind of short, though). I never saw those other two you mentioned.
... no rental market, which means I can't get a look at "Bikini Drive-in" to decide if I want to buy it or not.
I wouldn't mind "burn on demand" for obscure movies with a niche market (which might well describe the ones mentioned), it is far better than "unavailable." But it has one drawback that regularly published titles don't
Here might be an actual legitimate application for DRM - a VERY CHEAP ($2-3) download that expired in a few days, and you can get the $2-3 applied as a credit on the price of the "burn-on-demand" copy of the same movie.
Hey, MPAA movie guys, listen up. Here's an idea that just might work. Go ahead, do it, I promise I won't sue you for using it! Really! I promise!
Teen Angel - a Ghost Story
OK. I'll raise the BS flag.
Digital piracy did not consume the music business. Price gouging, crappy releases, treating customers like criminals, and failure to adapt to changing technologies harmed the music business. That is, just as with so many other businesses, the cause of problems in the music business was simple mismanagement.
"It is nice to know that the computer understands the problem. But I would like to understand it too." --Eugene Wigner
Who the hell modded this informative? This poster has obviously not RTFA and is just trolling. The post is factually incorrect.
And by the way, Do you know how long it takes to copy gigabytes of redundant movie data to an iPod?
I believe most of broadband users have download speeds of 1.5Mbps or more. That's more than enough to comfortably stream a 480p movie using an mpeg4 codec (h264 if the box is able, XviD equivalent if not). There is absolutely no reason the movie couldn't start playing within 10 seconds and keep going without interruptions. A combination of highspeed servers and peers will work. Ah, and the movies wouldn't take more than 1000 MB.
Don't get me wrong. A $300 box and $6 movie rentals is a ripoff. Using people's upload without compensating them is a ripoff. The quality of the movies will have to be inferior to DVD for the bitrates to remain acceptable. And ontop of that, DRM!
The only enticing part of this is the instant gratification. There are better and cheaper illegal alternatives out there. DRM-free, any resolution you want, biggest media selection in the world. And honestly, I don't see how anyone could feel guilty using those alternatives, given the way certain content producing companies treat their customers. Just because they're not doing anything illegal (Duh, they can actually buy laws. Remember the 20 year extension of copyright? How about the DMCA? How about going to jail for taping a movie in a theater?) does not mean they are any more ethical than the pirates they try to demonize.
Fuck them.
just because they're on imdb does not mean they were ever released on dvd.
Here might be an actual legitimate application for DRM
The applications of DRM are not the problem (Hell, I even would support some of them). The problem is that it can never work, and attempts to force it to work are damaging other things.
In my country, far from anywhere, the ISPs limit most plans with a data cap 5/10/20GB per month. On the 'unlimited' plan/s they rate shape ALL traffic flows, so you basically get about 256Kb actual line speed.
I wonder how long bandwidth intensive applications are going to be left unchecked by the ISPs, in all countries, it seems to me they are the ones who can make all these new data heavy Internet applications succeed or fail.
Part of the problem is some studios have forgotten they even own the rights to some movies. Electric Dreams is one such movie, the only DVD copies being unofficial copies made from VHS releases. Some are only available in other countries and/or out of print such as Prime Risk. Flash Gordon has been long in need of a US re-release. And I want to see Bruce Campbell and Walter Koenig in Moontrap again, and have ever since the similar Virus (1999) came out. I'm sure Terminal Entry is as bad as I remember it, but I'd like to see it again. And where else but in Deadly Friend can you see an old woman get her head flattened by a basketball?
Nevermind the TV series that have yet to be considered for release like Whiz Kids (had a early crossover with Simon & Simon, being released on DVD, in its third episode), or even TV 101 with a young Matt LeBlanc. Even more recent shows have yet to come out that have some public interest, like Strange Luck. But with the original series now coming out on DVD, there's a small hope that Mission: Impossible (1988) will get released.
I don't expect Drive will come out as it was canceled after four episodes with two more maybe being aired this summer. I'm glad I decided to record them in 720p on my computer. Mid-season and late-tail season series premieres look to be good hunting ground for content that may never get published on durable media.
What percentage of series in this quote will never make it to DVD?
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?