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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.'"
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.