The race to deliver movies and other high-quality video programming from the Internet to the living-room television is heating up. Vudu, the set-top box maker with the cute scroll-wheel remote control and speedy movie download service, said Wednesday that a version of its service would be available next month on Internet-enabled high-definition TVs made by LG Electronics USA.
Steve Marcus/Reuters The Vudu set-top box provides instant delivery of thousands of movies.The announcement marks a turning point for the two-year-old service, which my colleague David Pogue has raved about. Though it will continue to sell its black set-top box in outlets like Best Buy, Vudu says it has shifted focus to developing its service for HDTVs and other Internet-connected devices. (Vizio, an American TV manufacturer, previously said it would integrate Vudu into its sets.)
“I’ve been waiting 10 years for this,” said Edward Lichty, Vudu’s executive vice president of strategy and content, referring to the emergence of TVs with broadband connections and processors fast enough to support streaming media. “The set-top box business itself is not large; the consumer electronics industry is much bigger.”
Mr. Lichty says Vudu is “aggressively working to sign more partners.”
In the original Vudu service, movies were downloaded to a user’s set-top box. A short snippet of each film was cached on the device, so movies could play instantly once they were rented or purchased outright.
The new Vudu service is entirely cloud-based and movies are streamed, not downloaded. The company says it has developed compression technology that allows even HD movies to start playing instantly on most broadband connections and lets users jump right to chapters, like a DVD. We look forward to road-testing that ourselves, although a demo this week, using a mocked-up Vudu box, worked as advertised.
Vudu has had something of a rough time lately, laying off staff, sharply cutting the price of its box and losing a chief executive only to have the founder and Silicon Valley veteran Alain Rossmann take over the company as chief executive.
It will face tough competition trying to get the attention of TV makers and couch potatoes. Both Netflix and Amazon.com are also furiously doing deals to integrate their movie services into consumer electronics devices. (Apple, with its iTunes service, is strangely absent in this market.) And Amazon in particular has the wherewithal to discount movies and undercut Vudu on the price of movie rentals and purchases.
Sadly, with its service embedded in LG and other televisions, Vudu will also probably lose its signature remote control. However, Mr. Lichty advises customers to “stay tuned” on that front, suggesting the company might be also trying to license some of its unique design flourishes to its new partners.
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