While the tech world watches on with a gathering sense of anticipation regarding the unfolding performance and adoption of Apple Inc.’s much talked about Apple TV media extender service, little Santa Clara-based Vudu Inc. is hoping to work a little tech hoodoo on prospective set-top box owners with its VUDU media delivery device.
According to a New York Times story covering the emergent alternative to Apple TV, Vudu Inc. “hopes to turn America’s televisions into limitless multiplexes, providing instant gratification for moviebuffs,” helping them to bid a fond “goodbye to laborious computer downloads, sticky-floored movie theaters and cable companies’ much narrower video-on-demand offerings.”
“VUDU is freedom,” states the official Web site. “It doesn’t require a PC and is independent of your cable or satellite TV service.” Which basically means that, unlike Apple TV, Vudu’s free-standing, streaming video set-top device requires no physical connection to a user’s PC as it connects to the Net through an Ethernet port.
And, furthermore, Vudu claims that its users will be able to watch their orders instantly, without being forced to wait for a sizeable download buffer to first establish itself in order to ensure uninterrupted viewing. Built in a similar vein to BitTorrent’s popular movie download protocol, VUDU works on a P2P (peer-to-peer) network in order to drive content swiftly to the waiting set-top device.
However, the arrival of VUDU perhaps isn’t likely to send quivers of dread through Apple Inc., especially as various other companies are also offering set-top box media delivery direct to users’ TVs. For example, San Mateo-based Akimbo launched its “world’s largest premium Internet service” in 2003, while MovieBeam wirelessly provides on-demand film rentals through the Net. Microsoft’s Xbox Live Video Marketplace also delivers movies and media via the next-gen videogame console hub, and the likes of TiVo also download movies directly from Amazon’s UnBox service.
Vudu Inc. states that Hollywood’s ears are well and truly pricked regarding its service, revealing that content deals have already been penned with all the main tinsel town players – apart from Sony Pictures. However, without officially unveiling the actual content set to be available through VUDU, the potential of this latest set-top box in an already cluttered marketplace remains to be seen. And, as distributor paranoia concerning hacking and pirating is considerable – regardless of DRM copy protection – this means that much of today’s direct download content is seldom newly released product but rather lower-tier or classic offerings.
Pricing for Vudu Inc.’s VUDU set-top box is presently pointing towards a retail arrival of around $300 USD, and, perhaps unsurprisingly, all downloads will be locked by Digital Rights Managment and also restricted to the host box, which immediately cancels out portable transfer to a mobile media device. Success in waiting? Somehow we think not.
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