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

Re:Deteriorating?

[jZnat]

Well, there's this one theatre I went to recently that has a strict policy for R-rated films (they get their own hall, and you need both a stamp and your ticket to get in, and they check for ID), and even though there were probably at least 50 kids at the theatre, none of them were in the R-rated films. So, in order to enjoy your movie-going experience, it's best to enjoy crude humour (e.g., Aqua Teen Hunger Force), explosions, gratuitous violence, and sex. Or enjoy films that the kids wouldn't like anyhow.