I love vudu, but...........

[mmavant]

I have been using vudu for about 1 month now in our newly completed home theater.

I am impressed with the image quality even with the non HD stuff.

There is nothing quite like being able to scroll through & choose movies without ever leaving your chair.

So, I would consider myself a Vudu fan. However, I have 3 issues ( 2 small, 1 may eventually be a "deal breaker").

• There often seems to be a lag between the sound & the video which can get irritating. Could be my equipment but I have pretty good stuff & it usually improves when I stop the movie & restart it.
• We have DSL ultra (or extreme???, can't remember which) which is supposed to allow for speeds up to 6 mbps. It still takes about 1 hr to get an HD movie ready to watch. Not Vudu's fault & hopefully I can work with my internet provider to improve this.
• My wife & I are becoming quite frustrated that so many movies are only available for purchase. My kids talked me into spending $19.99 so we could watch Mulan recently, but there are just not many movies I want to own. I love to watch a variety of movies & most I would never watch again; but I would gladly take the risk & pay $ 2 - $5 if I can rent it. I envisioned Vudu as an ultra-convenient Blockbuster or Netflix type of expereince. I realize there are many issues involved regarding licenses, etc, but practically speaking, Vudu will not be able to survive long-term IMHO if they cannot offer a true download rental service. Maybe Blockbuster should forget about buying Circuit City & merge with Vudu. Now that would be the next Tivo/DVR type of improvement in home entertainment!
• One more thing that my wifewants me to mention: We had placed several movies in our wish list only to find those movies are no longer available. Wha gives??

Sorry for the long post. But, in short, I love Vudu but some things need to change!

[NA9D]

Re: I love vudu, but...........

Welcome to Vudu. I'll try to answer your questions:

There often seems to be a lag between the sound & the video which can get irritating. Could be my equipment but I have pretty good stuff & it usually improves when I stop the movie & restart it.

Hmm...I've never seen this. You may want to contact customer service about it. This should not happen.

[*]We have DSL ultra (or extreme???, can't remember which) which is supposed to allow for speeds up to 6 mbps. It still takes about 1 hr to get an HD movie ready to watch. Not Vudu's fault & hopefully I can work with my internet provider to improve this.

Just because your provider says you can get 6 Mbps does not mean that is what you are getting with DSL. DSL is distance based and as such, the farther you are from the CO, the slower your speed. You are probably only getting 2 or 3 MB/sec.

[*] My wife & I are becoming quite frustrated that so many movies are only available for purchase. My kids talked me into spending $19.99 so we could watch Mulan recently, but there are just not many movies I want to own. I love to watch a variety of movies & most I would never watch again; but I would gladly take the risk & pay $ 2 - $5 if I can rent it. I envisioned Vudu as an ultra-convenient Blockbuster or Netflix type of expereince. I realize there are many issues involved regarding licenses, etc, but practically speaking, Vudu will not be able to survive long-term IMHO if they cannot offer a true download rental service. Maybe Blockbuster should forget about buying Circuit City & merge with Vudu. Now that would be the next Tivo/DVR type of improvement in home entertainment!

Even if Blockbuster purchased Vudu, it would not change the reality and make everything available for rental. See my sticky about the licensing and there's been some other very good posts lately about this topic as well by another user. It's the way the digital licenses are. There's nothing that can be done about it except for Hollywood to change and they are doing that at a snails pace.

[*]One more thing that my wifewants me to mention: We had placed several movies in our wish list only to find those movies are no longer available. Wha gives??[/list]Sorry for the long post. But, in short, I love Vudu but some things need to change!

Well, movies can come and go from the catalog. For example, if a premium channel on cable has rights to the movie then it goes away from Vudu for a time and will eventually cycle back.

Your complaints on the licensing and availability are the same as the rest of us. However, with any online or VOD service you'll hit the same limitations.

[Rusdude]

Re: I love vudu, but...........

The sync problem is not something that should happen. As Jon mentioned, give Vudu a call. If the box is hooked up directly to the TV, I can't think of an explanation. If it's hooked up to a receiver, processor, etc. that could introduce delay and is usually solved by tweaking settings on the component (receiver, etc.).

As for the speed, I assume that the box places you in Instant SD tier, right? If so, try re-running the network test while nothing else is happening on your network to see if you could get Instant HD. I don't know if this happens with current version, but when I was doing heavy downloads or had network problems Vudu would downgrade itself because it's trying to be safe, i.e. it doesn't want to tell you that you can watch a movie instantly only to interrupt playback to buffer.

Or, it could be what Jon said and you aren't getting full 6 Mbps from your connection (which is probably < 5.5 anyway due to overhead). A good DSL provider should've warned you if that could happen though.

Added: yeah, movies coming and going is an annoying fact of life (Bourne Ultimatum and Transformers are gone for now which is quite sad since they were good HD titles). But we did ask Vudu to add something to at least notify us when a wish-listed movie was going to disappear (or add Going Soon - like Coming Soon in reverse).

[klieb]

Re: I love vudu, but...........

A number of new movies in the Vudu catalog will first be available for purchase only, but then after a bit of time will also be available for rent.

[Rusdude]

Re: I love vudu, but...........

A number of new movies in the Vudu catalog will first be available for purchase only, but then after a bit of time will also be available for rent.

Most of the time, I think this is due to a normal-but-unfortunate 30-day waiting period between purchase and rental that most studios have in place

[vino17]

Re: I love vudu, but...........

Get rid of the wife... problem solved!


(just kidding... I'm married too)