My thoughts on this service

[frnorth]

I have been looking over this forum and I found this an interesting topic, I think value is a key word these days and there is something about this service I am not a huge fan of.

Super post, Ron.....I see more and more HDX content for purchase as well, hardly any from major studios, except Disney.....Quite frankly, I think the state of the economy has a lot to do with the decline in disc sales..With a nearly 10% unemployment rate and no end in sight for that, it doesn't surprise me....

I hope you are right about VUDU's future, but who knows what will happen in 5 years time....This nation is in crisis and so many people don't see the light at the end of the tunnel is a train....I think the VUDU service is the best thing going right now and I am investing in it...The studios need to get a grip on what is happening in the real world......Hopefully, they will.....
Another fly in the ointment are the ISP's....Are they gonna just sit back and let their distribution systems become dumb pipes? I don't think so....They have a lot of money tied up in video distribution and will not go quietly into the night.......This is the one thing I am concerned about regarding streaming video.......They can start streaming services themselves, that could threaten third party entities to go out of business or get out of the streaming game.....Walmart ditched streaming once before, but to be fair lately I have seen a commitment from them to invest into the VUDU service and so far I am impressed.....

In terms of VUDU being a distributor of quality, they will need to show VALUE to the consumer...There are a lot of VOD services to compete with....The average consumer is not as obsessed with PQ as we may be....There has to be other reasons for a consumer to pick VUDU over a competitor.....The plus in their corner is that they have the worlld's largest retailer backing them...Who knows more about value than Walmart......

Really late to this conversation, but I think canadien37 makes a lot of valid points.

I am very new to this type of service, and I signed up for Netflix immediately. Vudu is something I did sign up for, but I have not used it yet. I've checked it out and have looked at some of the trailers on their site. But as far as even using the $5.99 credit they gave me, I have not.

I'm really turned off by their pricing structure. I understand it is based on film quality, but it's the same movie. It shouldn't be a different price. If all of the movies were the same price but I could select the quality based on my connection speed I would probably use this service.

I am the type who would rather buy a movie and watch it whenever I want as often as I want than to rent a movie and watch it once. I have well over 500 movies in my library as of last count and have added dozens since then.

I like the subscription service Netflix offers, but obviously Vudu is more about new releases and has a much better "fresh" library to chose from. The HDx service is nice but charging $2.00 more for the service over the SD version just does not sit well with me.

I understand Blueray costs more than a DVD if I were to physically purchase these movies, but that has to do with the payback to the manufacturers of Blueray for the technology they've invested in to create those disks.

As that technology has been paid for over time we have seen Blueray prices drop.

On the other hand streaming video there is not the same investment for equipment that there is in the manufacturing process, so I really don't feel a need to be charged 38% more for those movies. I can change the quality of a Youtube stream with the click of a mouse.

I will keep my eye on this service, but until there is a pricing restructure, I probably will decline to use it. For me it's about value.

I think in today's economy service providers need to find where the line is where people will pay for their services and where they will pass. And the question needs to be asked How many more customers would they have if they offered a better value for their product and will those additional customers return a better number to their bottom line than if they charged more for that service to fewer customers.

That will be an important question for Vudu as they venture forth.

[canadien37]

Re: My thoughts on this service

Thanks frnorth for taking my comment......My take concerning VUDU is they have done a lot of things to improve their product to the point of my wanting to invest more of my $$$ with them.....The difference in price is ok with me because of the quality difference, I usually choose HDX over HD for the same price.....And, if you look around, particularly in the "Explore HD" section, you can find some bargains.....Disney is the most expensive....I have a collection of over 160 movies on VUDU, enjoyed them all and will for time to come..

Perhaps the differences in price is due to licensing from the studios, also encoding HD,HDX vs SD....The recent promotion walmart ran with VUDU for Toy Story 3 was innovative, but didn't make sense to me as a digital collector....I simply bought the film on VUDU in HDX and that was that....It was also 4.99 lower than the two previous Toy Story films....All in all, VUDU has worked for me since the beginning of their service...I still have the original BX100 VUDU box.....We all have different needs, what works for me may not work for you......

[aaronwt]

Re: My thoughts on this service

I have been looking over this forum and I found this an interesting topic, I think value is a key word these days and there is something about this service I am not a huge fan of.



Really late to this conversation, but I think canadien37 makes a lot of valid points.

I am very new to this type of service, and I signed up for Netflix immediately. Vudu is something I did sign up for, but I have not used it yet. I've checked it out and have looked at some of the trailers on their site. But as far as even using the $5.99 credit they gave me, I have not.

I'm really turned off by their pricing structure. I understand it is based on film quality, but it's the same movie. It shouldn't be a different price. If all of the movies were the same price but I could select the quality based on my connection speed I would probably use this service.

I am the type who would rather buy a movie and watch it whenever I want as often as I want than to rent a movie and watch it once. I have well over 500 movies in my library as of last count and have added dozens since then.

I like the subscription service Netflix offers, but obviously Vudu is more about new releases and has a much better "fresh" library to chose from. The HDx service is nice but charging $2.00 more for the service over the SD version just does not sit well with me.

I understand Blueray costs more than a DVD if I were to physically purchase these movies, but that has to do with the payback to the manufacturers of Blueray for the technology they've invested in to create those disks.

As that technology has been paid for over time we have seen Blueray prices drop.

On the other hand streaming video there is not the same investment for equipment that there is in the manufacturing process, so I really don't feel a need to be charged 38% more for those movies. I can change the quality of a Youtube stream with the click of a mouse.

I will keep my eye on this service, but until there is a pricing restructure, I probably will decline to use it. For me it's about value.

I think in today's economy service providers need to find where the line is where people will pay for their services and where they will pass. And the question needs to be asked How many more customers would they have if they offered a better value for their product and will those additional customers return a better number to their bottom line than if they charged more for that service to fewer customers.

That will be an important question for Vudu as they venture forth.

Everyone has different prices bewteen HD and SD. HD is always more expensive than SD on every VOD service or from cable providers On Demand service.

And I understand HDX being a $1 more since it is the best quality out there for digital download. The only thing better is watching from a Blu-ray disc.

[GaryInNY]

Re: My thoughts on this service

I'm really turned off by their pricing structure.

On the other hand streaming video there is not the same investment for equipment that there is in the manufacturing process, so I really don't feel a need to be charged 38% more for those movies.

I doubt the entire increased cost of BluRay is the pressing cost of the disc.

I'm sure Vudu (like BluRay) is partly charging for quality, like you pay more for better seats at some concerts or sporting events, and also yes, partly the cost of service. HDX uses more bandwidth than HD and more than SD, and bandwidth and servers cost money, so I'm sure there is some more cost for better quality at Vudu's end. I have no problem if Vudu wants to price this way, and I don't rent HDX for titles where I don't care as much about quality or where the original film is older and maybe lower quality.

Now that we've moved from Amadeus to Brazil on BX100, and newer devices have no storage, has the P2P distribution method been abandoned for everyone? I don't see much network traffic anymore from my BX100 when the box is off. If as I suspect everything is now streamed from a Vudu server someplace, I'm sure streaming HDX does cost more and bigger servers and higher capacity connection to the Internet on Vudu's end (where they have to stream many movies at once). This may be one reason HD and HDX are now priced differently, where they were often the same in the early days with Amadeus and P2P distribution (the cost difference may be less than $1 per quality step, but greater than $0, so it's probably partly actual cost of better service, and partly charging for quality).

Does Brazil mean it's not as important to the service to keep our BX100's on all the time, because they're now basically idle (except occasional updates) while "off" and are not needed to be online for P2P serving anymore?