Vudu for home entertainment of tomorrow
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REVIEW: Pricey cost of gadget, downloads will prevent major adoption
By Samantha Clark -- Video Business, 9/21/2007
SEPT. 21 | Vudu could very well be the future of home entertainment, with a stress on future.
This roughly 8-inch by 8-inch box is a powerful home entertainment gadget. It plugs into a TV, and within a couple of minutes, offers 5,000 titles, mostly movies with some special interest, from major studios and indies alike.
Our review unit was a little buggy at first, having no doubt been used excessively by other reporters before us, but once Vudu’s problems were fixed (the box rebooted itself a few times), we discovered it was quite easy to use.
The nifty remote takes a little getting used to. Much like an iPod’s wheel control, Vudu’s four buttons and a scroll wheel seem alien at first, and you end up hitting the wrong button instinctively a few times. But you quickly clue in to the way Vudu’s menu works, which in turn helps guide your usage of the remote.
Vudu’s menu is deceptively simple. The initial screen offers six movie posters under buttons for “Find Movies,” “New Releases,” “My Movies,” “My Wish List” and “Info & Settings.” Scroll to your choice, then press down on the wheel to select.
If you scroll to the posters, continuing to scroll to the right will eventually take you through Vudu’s entire library. But in the “Find Movies” section, you can search by genre (even multiple genres, such as romance and comedy, or indie, horror and sci-fi), title, actor or director. When you choose a potential title, you can click on an actor or the director to see more of their movies.
Vudu also offers “Staff Picks” as well as fun collections, which change often. One evening, one of the collections offered was “Desperate Housewives,” which included such movies as Fur, Far From Heaven and The Hours.
The content downloads fast and can be played almost immediately. Programming is available in high-definition, but we couldn’t see any indication on the menus of which titles were high-def.
All this sounds pretty good, but the reason this is the future of home entertainment as opposed to now is money.
Vudu is convenient, fun and easy to use, but it comes into the home with a hefty $399 price tag, and after that, users must pay between $2 and $4 for each movie they rent or around $15 to own the download.
If consumers want their entertainment delivered to them, DVD subscription services such as Netflix, with plans from $5 to $17 a month, or even the video-on-demand offered through their local cable service are better options right now. Movies debut on Vudu in the pay-per-view window, making them later than Netflix but at the same time as cable VOD.
If Vudu offers a subscription plan in the future or a free box with paid rentals and downloads, it could see major adoption.
