By Stevie Smith Sep 7, 2007, 15:59 GMT
In a hotly-contested online world where high-profile media download portals are battling one another daily to secure the greatest slice of the demographical pie, a bold upstart start-up from California is hoping to win through as the underdog, courtesy of a little Vudu.
While the likes of Apple and Amazon may be the more obvious of the newly emerging download choices, Santa Clara-based Vudu Inc., is offering users its own TV set-top box with which they can access on-demand movie content.
The Vudu service, which launched this week, is set to deliver up a selection of some 5,000 movie titles for either set rental or full purchase – and all through the Internet, reports the LA Times while also pointing out that 5,000 titles equates to the shelf-bound offerings typically found in a high street Blockbuster rental store.
Prospective users of the service will be able to access the wealth of downloadable media after first investing $399 USD in the official Vudu set-top box. This will then gain them entry to a portal featuring movies from the likes of Hollywood Studios, Lions Gate, New Line, Paramount, Sony Pictures, 20th Century Fox, Universal, Walt Disney, and Warner Bros. all of which are onboard to provide Vudu with its catalogue of content.
"We’re bringing a broad array of mainstream content straight into the living room," enthused Patrick Cosson, VP of marketing and sales at Vudu Inc.
While a host of big-name movies can be accessed via Vudu’s magic box, the relatively unknown service faces stiff market opposition from the likes of Netflix, which offers a similar amount of online movie choice beside its impressive mail-order selection of 80,000 titles. Greater competition also rears its head in the form of cable company Comcast, which offers more than 9,000 TV and movie titles to its subscribers – with over 90 percent of that content delivered free of charge.
Despite its solid array of content choice, which could see it competing strongly beside its rivals, analysts are suggesting that other factors could suck the magical attraction out of Vudu.
Specifically, the initial outlay of $399 USD for the set-top box falls beyond of the $300 USD threshold of acceptance that most consumers are willing to pay for a new piece of gadgetry, says Carmel Group president Sean Badding. Of course, the costs do not stop there, with users then looking at tiered rental fees from $0.99 USD to $3.99 USD per movie choice, while full purchase movies stored to the set-top box’s 250GB HDD cost between $4.99 USD and $19.99 USD.
According to Badding, the odds are against Vudu in a market that has already seen the likes of Disney, Intel, and Cisco fail to find traction for their collaborative MovieBeam download service, which required a cheaper $100 USD box investment beside movie rentals priced between $1.99 USD and $4.99 USD.
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