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

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.

Re:Bad copy?

[El_Muerte_TDS]

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

Something seems off here...

[Underbruin]

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.

Re:How long?

[jackharrer]

//How long is the piece of string?

From one end to another... ;)

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.