Vudu, from Santa Clara, California, has finally launched its digital home movie delivery system. For $399, you get a small 250GB set-top box that plugs into a high-speed Internet connection, downloads movies and shows them on a TV set without you having to use a PC. After that, you pay per movie.
The New York Times's David Pogue has had a look. He says:
How can one hard drive hold 5,000 movies? This is the best part: it doesn't. It actually holds only the first 30 seconds of each movie -- typically the movie studio logos. While you watch that, the rest of the movie quietly begins to download; the handoff from the starter stub to the downloaded portion is undetectable.
This impressive engineering feat also explains two other quirks of the Vudu box. First, you cannot fast-forward into a movie that just started. Second, you cannot use the Vudu box without a fast Internet connection -- preferably a wired one. Cable modems are great, but basic D.S.L. and dial-up connections are not fast enough. Higher-tier D.S.L. plans might have the required speed; a speed-testing button appears at Vudu.com.
The movies are downloaded using peer-to-peer file-sharing. I'm amazed if this is fast enough to allow US users to watch a movie while it's downloading.
Pogue does point out that Vudu is much like the old MovieBeam video-on-demand system, which was started by Disney then spun off in early 2006. There's also Akimbo.
At PaidContent.org, Rafat Ali rubbished the story back in April, in Vudu Casts a Spell on NYT, and returns with Idiots In The Box, Part Deux.
The Vudu launch has also been covered by Reuters, LA Times, USA Today and many more.
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