Great Deal on VUDU Box

[obiwopkenobi62]

Originally Posted by Movie-Grrl

I actually came here since I was considering purchasing a BD player, however this Vudu Box may better fit my needs. Think I'll order one tomorrow and see how it works out. I'll keep you all posted.

Thanks Obi

You're very welcome. I love mine.

[obiwopkenobi62]

Originally Posted by JasonS

How is the menu / interface of the Vudu? I've been looking into one for rentals (I obviously have a huge Blu-ray collection) so it wouldn't be replacing, but would be supplemental. Nothing is worse than anticipating release Tuesday only to have Blockbuster run out of copies.

Their menu system is super easy to operate. As for new releases they don't always have them available for rent same day, but they have everything listed as far as when it will be available. There is a wish list on the "My Vudu" link, so you can load it up and when it is available you just rent it. Very cool.

[obiwopkenobi62]

Originally Posted by mapledragon

The HD and HDX versions are rentals only. If you download it, the license expires and you can't watch it again whenever you watn to. They're really like renting blu-ray disks, except at lower quality.

As far as licenses go for a movie Vudu is the same as everyone else. 30 days availability, once you start watching you have 24 hours. You can also re-rent for a very small fee like 99 cents. As far as video quality, it's very close to Blu-ray.

[obiwopkenobi62]

Originally Posted by atomik kinder

Also, what happens when a studio decides to pull a movie? Do you really expect EVERYTHING to ALWAYS be available? What if a studio decides to retire a movie? You won't be able to rent it any longer and you can't buy it from someone else who might have it. What happens if VUDU goes out of business? It is a new business, happens all the time. You'll be stuck with a player that can rent movies anymore and maybe a few DVD quality movies you downloaded onto the hard drive.

I did a lot of research on this before buying. I honestly don't think they will go under since they are connected now with Best Buy.
As far as studios pulling movies, the same can be said for every other movie streaming/download site, (Apple TV, Netflix/Roku etc)
Right now they have over 12,000 movies and tons of TV shows. Like I said before, after doing the research with every other streaming/download option, Vudu came out on top in my book. Their SD stuff is about DVD quality, and their HD is better than DVD, HDX is very close to Blu-ray quality.

[mapledragon]

Originally Posted by obiwopkenobi62

As far as licenses go for a movie Vudu is the same as everyone else. 30 days availability, once you start watching you have 24 hours. You can also re-rent for a very small fee like 99 cents. As far as video quality, it's very close to Blu-ray.

Define 'close'.

Blu-ray titles are encoded with peak bitrates of 40Mbps, typically 20-25Mbps average bitrate titles are common. From what I saw, similar to AppleTV, Vudu HD titles are encoded at 4Mbps and HDX titles are at some higher bitrate unknown to me.

If you pause through your HDX movies, you will easily find inloop filter or deblocking artifacts typical of low bitrate encodes.

On any reasonably complex scenes in just about any action movie, if you can watch it side by side with a Blu-ray disk of the same movie on a reasonable TV, the difference would not be close, it would be like night and day.

Close is a very subjective term. I already saw 4Mbps encodes that look substantially worse than HD-cable, so I don't believe VUDU-HD is anywhere close.

I don't have unscrambled HDX vudu content so I can't comment about the quality of VUDU-HDX movies, but even if they're 10Mbps, the current state of codec technology simply makes them nowhere close in any A/B testing for enough content that would make me question your definition of "close".

[RandDawg]

Originally Posted by obiwopkenobi62

I had Netflix and I got tired of wondering when the movie would get to my house. No good for me.

Mine always arrive at the same time as the mail. How were yours delivered?

[obiwopkenobi62]

Originally Posted by RandDawg

Mine always arrive at the same time as the mail. How were yours delivered?

Are you serious?
Mine would arrive the same time as my mail too. That's not what I meant. I didn't think I had to explain but here goes.
I got tired of not knowing what day they would get delivered. In other words you can't exactly plan on when you're going to watch a movie if you don't know when you're going to get it.

[obiwopkenobi62]

Originally Posted by mapledragon

Define 'close'.

Blu-ray titles are encoded with peak bitrates of 40Mbps, typically 20-25Mbps average bitrate titles are common. From what I saw, similar to AppleTV, Vudu HD titles are encoded at 4Mbps and HDX titles are at some higher bitrate unknown to me.

If you pause through your HDX movies, you will easily find inloop filter or deblocking artifacts typical of low bitrate encodes.

On any reasonably complex scenes in just about any action movie, if you can watch it side by side with a Blu-ray disk of the same movie on a reasonable TV, the difference would not be close, it would be like night and day.

Close is a very subjective term. I already saw 4Mbps encodes that look substantially worse than HD-cable, so I don't believe VUDU-HD is anywhere close.

I don't have unscrambled HDX vudu content so I can't comment about the quality of VUDU-HDX movies, but even if they're 10Mbps, the current state of codec technology simply makes them nowhere close in any A/B testing for enough content that would make me question your definition of "close".

Let's put it this way. My HD Dish content is pretty great looking on most channels and the Vudu HD is on par with that. The HDX is better. I gauge the quality by what I see, and what I see is damn good. Don't get me wrong as I said before I didn't buy it as a replacement for Blu-rays, it's a replacement for renting and blind buying of Blu-rays.

[Movie-Grrl]

Got my Vudu box up and running. Wow, I'm impressed. This is a lot more than I expected.


Thanks!

[obiwopkenobi62]

Originally Posted by Movie-Grrl

Got my Vudu box up and running. Wow, I'm impressed. This is a lot more than I expected.


Thanks!

My Mom and Dad came up for a visit this past weekend and I showed them the Vudu box. We watched one of the movies in HDX and it was very close to Blu-ray quality picture wise, sound was good too.

[obiwopkenobi62]

They are running a special now on Vudu for 100.00
Then another 79.00 for the 2 wireless units. That's a great deal.
Been using mine quite a bit and have had no problems at all.

[jkwest]

Originally Posted by obiwopkenobi62

They are running a special now on Vudu for 100.00
Then another 79.00 for the 2 wireless units. That's a great deal.
Been using mine quite a bit and have had no problems at all.

where do you see that price? I'm seeing $149...

[obiwopkenobi62]

Originally Posted by jkwest

where do you see that price? I'm seeing $149...

Oops, yep you're right. 149.00 + 79.00 for the 2 wireless units. You could just run an ethernet cable. 149.00 is a great price for this baby though.

[jkwest]

Originally Posted by obiwopkenobi62

$149.00 is a great price for this baby though.

$100 would have been even better!!

[Tempest]

$6. to watch a movie in HD? Ouch.. Watch a movie 2-3 times and you could of purchased it on Blu Ray with superior quality. I would rather stick to renting through Net Flix for about $1.10 a movie in Blu Ray for those I don't want to buy. Now if they had something on par with Netflix I might consider it, but even so, my DSL internet connection is not fast enough and AT&T internet provider has some kind of Anti Heavy Use cap/restrictions in place as I have found out.

They need to offer a montly fee like netflix where you can watch whatever you want for the monthly fee. But even if they did that and were more reasonable... they just don't have everything available either so that makes them unable to replace my netflix once again.

[jkwest]

whoa...didn't notice it was $6 per rental...lol...pass..

[obiwopkenobi62]

Originally Posted by Tempest

$6. to watch a movie in HD? Ouch.. Watch a movie 2-3 times and you could of purchased it on Blu Ray with superior quality. I would rather stick to renting through Net Flix for about $1.10 a movie in Blu Ray for those I don't want to buy. Now if they had something on par with Netflix I might consider it, but even so, my DSL internet connection is not fast enough and AT&T internet provider has some kind of Anti Heavy Use cap/restrictions in place as I have found out.

They need to offer a montly fee like netflix where you can watch whatever you want for the monthly fee. But even if they did that and were more reasonable... they just don't have everything available either so that makes them unable to replace my netflix once again.

No, actually the point of it is no monthly fee. Also the majority of movies are not 6.00.
If you had read the entire thread, the purpose of me getting the Vudu box was
1. No monthly fees
2. No trips to the video store
3. No waiting for netflix movies to come to my mailbox
4. Streaming movies instantly on the HDTV.
5. Their HDX format movies are just about as good as Blu-ray.
6. No more blind buying Blu-ray movies that I haven't seen yet.

Now if you don't have a Vudu box or know someone that has one, how could you know what the quality of it is? What do you base your opinion on?
The other thing is I don't want to pay a monthly fee because there are actually times where I go over a month and not watching anything so for me that would be money wasted.
I personally loved Netflix when they were new but can't stand them now.
For me the Vudu box was the way to go.

I actually did try the Netflix download stuff and hated it. The quality was pretty bad. Not so with Vudu. I also prefer cable modem(which I have) over DSL.
I would suggest Vudu over any of the other services out there and I have tried most of them. Apple TV, Netflix, Amazon Unbox(I tried them all). None of these come close to the quality of Vudu.

Also Vudu has more deals in place and is constantly adding to their library.

[obiwopkenobi62]

Originally Posted by jkwest

whoa...didn't notice it was $6 per rental...lol...pass..

They are not 6 bucks per rental. Don't believe evrything you read. LOL....
Check out their website. They run anywhere from .99 and up, most are in the 3.99 range which is cheaper than going to the video store.

[Josh]

This is turning into a revolving advertisement. Closing.

And I don't want to see any PMs about my decision. Its final.