The OnDemand feature is a definite bonus to the Vudu box and truly adds value (seriously, I'd buy a Vudu box for $100 if that's all does is play podcasts). I just have some questions about its future.
- Will we be able to add our RSS feeds of our liking? It would be awesome if Vudu could become my replacement for Miro. If not, could a forum be opened to suggest new feeds? For instance, one of my favorite video podcasts is "Pro At Cooking" (http://www.proatcooking.com). Its RSS feed is at http://feeds2.feedburner.com/patc. I also like a lot of the other TED talks not available.
- Would more than 15 podcasts be available per feed? There are lot of older episodes of SYSTM that I just can't watch on the box.
- Could we queue/download feeds to watch later? Again, functionality like Miro. Not all feeds are up to par with watching in real time as far as bandwidth is concerned, so I'm assuming they're not cached and the content is coming straight from the podcast servers. A lot of podcasts come out often enough that people are going to watch them on a daily/weekly basis.
- What if popular feeds were seeded? Most users won't realize why their favorite OnDemand feed isn't "on demand". I was thinking that some podcasters would rather people download directly for stats, but a lot of them actually prefer people using torrents because it costs them less to host. This would require a good amount of users to be worth the trouble, or possibly just the users "subscribed" would seed the podcasts they are subscribed to.
- What if popular feeds were cached? Same concept as seeding, except a little more centralized and would require less users. Possibly lower quality previews could be cached, or even just the first minute of the podcast to give it more time to buffer straight from their server. It's crazy idea and probably will be too complex to be practical, but I'm throwing it out there.
- Sync OnDemand with iPod? This is an off-the-wall idea, but what about a feature off to the side to pull iPod quality stuff and dump it onto the device when an iPod is plugged in?

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