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.'"

Comments

Bad copy?

[Baricom]

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.)

Re:Bad copy?

[mgv]

It's revolutionary because this time the DRM is going to work.

See my .sig

Michael

5,000 videos of rubbish

[aussie_a]

The box's biggest asset is raw speed: the company says the films will begin playing immediately after a customer makes a selection. Either this is going to be limited in which areas it is deployed or else this is hyperbole of the extreme. I doubt it will be able to deliver instantaneous playing straight for people no matter where they are in America as there are many places that do not have broadband.

If Vudu succeeds, it may mean goodbye to laborious computer downloads, sticky-floored movie theaters and cable companies' much narrower video-on-demand offerings. Good luck with that. However the technology to release movies simultaneously with theatre releases has existed for some time (VHS), and every major studio released their stuff on VHS, but somehow managed to delay the VHS release until after the theatre release in most cases. I don't see anything in Vudu's offering that is likely to change this. Also if this requires I have an internet connection (it was a little light on that detail) then it won't do very well as people typically do not want their internet connection slowing to a halt because little billy wants to 101 Dalmatians. Also it doesn't mention if I will be able to burn my movie onto a DVD. If I can then what sort of DRM am I going to get encumbered with? If not, then I don't see these replacing DVDs (or Bluray/HDDVD). People like to be able to take a movie to their friends place without their friend needing to have a Vudu. Now unless Vudu quickly becomes cheaper then DVDs, I see this being too large a hurdle for it to overcome.

Do people care?

[Turn-X Alphonse]

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.

Deteriorating?

[4D6963]

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?

Re:Deteriorating?

[Councilor Hart]

• People chatting instead of watching the movie. The entire length. (happend to me more than once)
  
• Whining kids.
  
• Doors not closing automatically when the movie starts, so either you try to ignore the outside glare (really great if the opening scene is quite dark) or you get up and close the door yourself. Which is usually reopened a few minutes later by late people who are looking for a seat. They do this either chatting, either blocking your field of view. Or even worse, they ask you to move from your seat which you have occupied for the last half hour because you were in time and wanted to have a decent position in the theater (relative to the screen) in a chair that is not falling apart.
  
• One of the sound boxes fails half way, and keeps churning throughout the remainder.
  
• They start playing the wrong movie.
  
• Sound system is badly adjusted. Or it's so loud, your ears ring for hours afterwards.
  
• The sound from the theater above,below,right, left is seeping through the walls.
  
• Misaligned picture.
  
• Subtitles (with DVD I can finally turn them off)
  
• Toilet fee.
  
• Overpriced food and you are not allowed to bring your own.
  
• Overpriced tickets. Spend a few euros more and you can buy the dvd after a few months.
  
• 20 minutes of commercials, and that amount just keeps rising.
  
• etc.

You're right. Nothing has changed. It has always been crappy. But now we finally have a choice. We can watch at our home theater. I don't want to go to the theater anymore. And when I do, I go with friends. I see it then as a social event and just hope the theater experience that evening isn't too bad. Dinner, movie and bar. Most of the weeks we just skip the movie.

Re:Deteriorating?

[Councilor Hart]

Or perhaps our perception and tolerance has changed.
As kids we didn't care or did it ourself. As adults, who can't go everyday or to every move and who don't have two months of summer vacation, we just want to watch the movie and not be annoyed by bored kids.

Re:Deteriorating?

[ewg]

The cinema experience isn't deteriorating; the Slashdot crowd is reaching the age where people get tired of it.

Apple's a bad example.

[ScrewMaster]

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.

Re:Voodoo or Snake Oil?

[nonsequitor]

The one thing commercial P2P companies always seem to forget is to compensate the end user for their bandwidth. If they tracked how much you upload and "purchased" your bandwidth using store credit or something, then this might be a viable model. However, if they don't do that they'll find themselves throttled to a trickle in my house since I have better uses for the bandwidth, which I pay for, than to give it to some company which isn't even compensating me for it.