Over a year ago I first got my hands on the innovative Vudu set-top box and reviewed its movie streaming capabilities. Unlike the countless gadgets and devices that I come across, I have not outgrown the Vudu box. I use it a ton. It instantly streams rental movies in HD, with the option of even higher resolution ‘HDX’ with a delay. Of course, the Vudu also lets me purchase movies for keeps and store them on the hard drive but I don’t buy movies often as I generally don’t find much value in rewatching movies unless it’s a quotable classic like The Fast and The Furious.
My home theater might have changed over the year but the Vudu box still remains an integral part of my setup.
Then
Why do I pay up to $5 to rent a movie when I can very easily acquire it through other means and play it on my HTPC? For one, browsing for movies to watch with the Vudu when I have guests is definitely a social experience. They can easily browse through thousands of movies, search for titles with Ryan Reynolds, titles similar to Definitely, Maybe or even just narrow it down to Action + Suspense + Comedy with their genre explorer. It can be likened to using the Sonos sound system with guests, passing the remote around, having them browse your music and change it up.
From there, I can watch a preview of the movie and when satisfied with my selection, rent and start watching it immediately – most of the time in HD (depends on the title). It’s all about simplified convenience.
My HTPC remains reserved for movies that I want to watch in very high quality, as well as watching TV shows – both of which the Vudu isn’t terribly good at due to limited (and outdated in the case of TV shows) collections. While the Vudu does have ‘HDX’ titles that compare to Blu-ray quality, their network doesn’t seem to be up to the challenge, making people wait up to 4 hours to begin watching the movie. That’s something I don’t need to be doing when I’m on an 80+ megabit fiber Internet connection that can download a 50GB 1080p movie in under 90 minutes.
There you have it. The Vudu box is my most prized gadget. Regardless of a few issues I have with it, it serves a great purpose. That being said, if you know a movie lover in your life and they don’t yet have a Vudu box, consider hooking them up for the holidays. What is your most prized gadget? What’s hooked up to your TV?
Note: I have yet to try out the Roku Netflix set-top box, which is on track to receiving HD support by the end of this year.
Thanks to creativehedgehog for suggesting this post on Skribit.
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I’ve been considering purchasing one of these boxes lately since my interest in movies has quadrupled over the past few months. Vudu make its way onto my personal Christmas list. :)
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I love that you use TFATF as your quotable movie example! Sadly, that’s one of my favorite movies as well. (Plus, it’s good for testing a sound system with plenty of loud music and car sounds.)
How does the Vudu compare to Netflix’s Watch Instantly? The streaming movie segment is definitely a hot area in technology right now, so it’ll be interesting to see who comes out on top. Good to see a relative outsider make a good fight out of it though.
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@Cory – I literally know _every_ line of that movie. :-)
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So you too live your life a quarter mile at a time? ;)
I’ll watch that movie just so I can see the Charger/Supra race at the end. Turn the sub up to 11, wait for wheelie, and bliss…
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In Greece we do not have yet systems like Vudu. :-(
Anyhow, I’ve have a system hooked up to the TV as well. It’s a quite old Compaq Presario laptop without it’s lid, which serves as a media home server, connected to the WiFi. It can server as a torrent downloader too. Unfortunately, it runs with WinXp because I didn’t have time to clean install Ubuntu and do Samba conf.
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I use the Popcorn Hour to stream all my movies from my server. SD, 720p and even 1080p movies are no problem. Also plays ripped DVD’s. Streams from a whole bunch of sites like Youtube. Havent really checked out the pay-per-view streaming sources though.
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I have a 40GB Apple TV hooked up to my TV running XBMC and Boxee. XBMC for my movie collection that I have all encoded and sitting on a networked drive, and Boxee for streaming TV/movies from sites like CBS, Comedy Central, and HULU. I haven’t yet tried renting movies through the iTMS so I can’t really comment on the quality of that. But for a local library the only thing that would make this setup better is a networked Drobo sitting right next to my Apple TV =D
I’ve got the Roku Netflix box and I LOVE IT! It costs me ~$15 / month to watch unlimited movies and episodes of The Office, Heroes, etc… The selection is somewhat limited, but they’ve probably added 100+ titles just since I got the box a month or two ago.
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I’m also a huge fan of my Popcorn Hour. Streams all my content off my server, which is just a really cheap Celeron-based Ubuntu machine. The Popcorn Hour handles everything I’ve thrown at it – 1080p transport streams, h264 encoded stuff, etc.
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This is the most positive review I’ve read of the Vudu and is actually making me consider purchasing it. It seems like a simplified version of my Windows Media Center / MyMovies / Windows Home Server setup. While my setup delivers the full Blu-ray movie over the network (including extras, high bitrate 1080p, nav menus, 7.1 channel HD audio, etc.), it is a lot of work to rip the movies and keep the MyMovies database up-to-date — not the mention the disk space requirements.
A Vudu box would add a larger selection and eliminate most of the maintenance, but I’m not sure I’m ready to give up the audiophile/videophile/bonus feature advantages of my current system. I think I’d like to run both in parallel and see how they compare.
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@James @Brandon – I’ve never heard of Popcorn Hour – it seems neat. My only concern is the time it would take to transfer 50GB blu-ray rips from my HTPC to the Popcorn Hour.. that being said it seems easier for my HTPC to serve double-duty and play as well as download media.
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Hey Paul – Great post, yet again! I have to say, the Vudu Box sounds interesting and I remember being intrigued when you first reviewed it. Glad it’s still holding value for you.
I currently am running the New Xbox Experience on my 360 and loving the Netflix Streaming, almost instantly and even has the addition of HD titles (a first for Netflix Streaming) For other content I am using PlayOn from MediaMall, it’s a light server that runs on my PC in the other room and allows either my PS3 or 360 to see it as a media source and stream Hulu, Netflix, YouTube, CBS, etc. Not bad, needs a bit of work though, streaming takes a bit of buffering ( I have an 8mb pipe, not a fat one like you ).
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Wow, I’m famous! (I’m creativehedgehog on Skribit)
as a side note, Paul, that is a cool way of reminding people about Skribit and encouraging us to use it. that suggestion was written because of your dash express post, it would be cool to have quick links in Skribit suggestions.
I agree about the rent/own thing. Sometimes I’ve missed movies at the theaters but still want to see them, yet don’t want to buy what may be a dud movie. (hands up everyone who has a DVD they’ve only watched once)
The video rental store is too far away… so I just get frustrated at the lack of watchable stuff in my DVD cabinet. Vudu would be a solution, except for the pathetic broadband speeds we can get here.
However, there are some movies you watch again and again and again- those I don’t mind having on DVD.
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I see that Vudu is now offering a rack-mount Vudu XL with a larger drive. This would integrate perfectly into my home theater equipment rack (no Middle Atlantic shelf required), but the $1300 MSRP is a bit steep.
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I hardly watch movie’s anymore – I have no time for them in the evenings with the masses of homework I have. I’ve never kept it with a television series. bit of a fail? indeed.
I have my 360, PS3 & PC attached too my peuny 19″ LCD HD Samsung tv – my monitor is bigger (HP W2207). I normally stream content from iPlayer or the other on-demand services we have over here in the UK sitting on my bed on my macbook pro.
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