Suggestions from new users!

[mbustin]

Re: Suggestions from new users!

FWIU, at present Vudu's target market is high end consumers. I'm speaking for them which could be a risky thing to do, but I think it's a safe bet they chose to target the high end user first. The high end users are likely going to be the early adopters of the technology. They have more disposable capital to spend on the box early on when the costs are high. I know from the types of stores that Vudu is initial targeting, that these stores are high end. So, I don't think it's incorrect to say that the first target market is high end users.

Long term, I believe Vudu's goal would be to have a box in every living room in the country! So long term they do want to sell the box to every Joe "Six Pack" out there. Costs will eventually come down to the point where that can be supported and Vudu's distribution model will ramp to that point as well.

Makes sense NA9D.

RW - I think I picked the same 3 features as you. Of course I put my request for subtitles/cc in the comment box

I just rented the long-awaited "Knocked Up" last night, but haven't watched it yet. This morning I get an email-ad from TiVo about updated unbox video offerings and Knocked Up is for rent at 99 cents!?! along with 300 and others ... competition is heating up!

[NA9D]

Re: Suggestions from new users!

FWIU, at present Vudu's target market is high end consumers. I'm speaking for them which could be a risky thing to do, but I think it's a safe bet they chose to target the high end user first. The high end users are likely going to be the early adopters of the technology. They have more disposable capital to spend on the box early on when the costs are high. I know from the types of stores that Vudu is initial targeting, that these stores are high end. So, I don't think it's incorrect to say that the first target market is high end users.

Long term, I believe Vudu's goal would be to have a box in every living room in the country! So long term they do want to sell the box to every Joe "Six Pack" out there. Costs will eventually come down to the point where that can be supported and Vudu's distribution model will ramp to that point as well.

[redwein]

Re: Suggestions from new users!

So how did you respond to that question? My top 3 were HD, movie selection, and longer rental period (window?). If those 3 are addressed, I can completely abandon my old way of doing things and can move into the world of HD without having to buy a BluRay or HD DVD player or discs. I would really start "urging" my friends to jump on this if that looks really imminent.

[mbustin]

Re: Suggestions from new users!

Just filled out the Vudu survey they sent. They didn't even list subtitles or closed captions as one of the features most important to the users to pick from..... sigh ....

[mbustin]

Re: Suggestions from new users!

I'm just going to assume that Vudu is working equally hard on hd,dd5.1, cc, subtitles, and an up-to-the-minute collection - they are ALL TOP priority

[Nded]

Re: Suggestions from new users!

That was just sent as a mild warning, as I didn't like the tone of "How do you know...", when this is really just an exchange of opinions. I just didn't want to see this spiral into an argument on the relative merits of CC.

[redwein]

Re: Suggestions from new users!

I really don't think we are bickering.

I agree. I didn't think we were bickering either. I thought we were just discussing and trying to understand the priorities based on our own perspective of what we thought was important to us and the market.

[mbustin]

Re: Suggestions from new users!

Come on guys, let's not bicker over the relative merits of CC vs 5.1. It's not like they are going to have to choose one over the other.

Fact: Vudu will deliver as many movies on 5.1 as possible. The capability to support 5.1 is already in the product, it's just a matter of beating up the studios to let go of their precious data. When the HD titles start hitting the catalog, I will be shocked if they aren't all in 5.1.

Fact: CC support is not in the current product. This feature request was brought up a long time ago in the early months of beta testing. The reality of the hardware (as we've all learned here) is that HDMI cannot deliver CC, so even if/when they start putting CC in the datastream, it still won't deliver text on the screen to the high end users. Only a subtitle implementation will fully fill the need.

The decision on supporting CC/Subtitles is not tied to expanded 5.1 delivery. It's not an either or. It might become an and/both, but we don't know when.

If the discussion of the OP's observations keeps going downhill like this, I will close this thread.

Nded,

I really don't think we are bickering. RW thinks that cc/subtitle users are used by the vast minority - I'm just wondering how he knows that, based on him asking some friends.

I'm not arguing for cc vs dd5.1, I'm just wondering what vudu's priorities are.

I previously asked an open question about who do we think vudu is targeting. I'm honestly wondering if it's the high-end guys represented in here or if it's the average joe blockbuster customer who just got broadband last month. If it's the average joe on the street then perhaps dd5.1 is not as important a priority as cc/st. That's all I'm wondering. I'm guessing HD and DD5.1 are the highest priorities for vudu ...

I have a home theater in the basement with HD/5.1 and use it for the blockbusters like 300. But when it comes watching to Sleepless In Seattle with my wife, we prefer to watch in the bedroom on our SD TV. So I'm not saying one feature is more important or better than the other. Just wondering what vudu's priorities are - since they won't tell us ...

[Nded]

Re: Suggestions from new users!

Come on guys, let's not bicker over the relative merits of CC vs 5.1. It's not like they are going to have to choose one over the other.

Fact: Vudu will deliver as many movies on 5.1 as possible. The capability to support 5.1 is already in the product, it's just a matter of beating up the studios to let go of their precious data. When the HD titles start hitting the catalog, I will be shocked if they aren't all in 5.1.

Fact: CC support is not in the current product. This feature request was brought up a long time ago in the early months of beta testing. The reality of the hardware (as we've all learned here) is that HDMI cannot deliver CC, so even if/when they start putting CC in the datastream, it still won't deliver text on the screen to the high end users. Only a subtitle implementation will fully fill the need.

The decision on supporting CC/Subtitles is not tied to expanded 5.1 delivery. It's not an either or. It might become an and/both, but we don't know when.

If the discussion of the OP's observations keeps going downhill like this, I will close this thread.

[mbustin]

Re: Suggestions from new users!

My point is that, no matter who they are going after, a rather small number of people use the feature.

If you're talking about closed captions or subtitles, I don't know how you can make the determination that it's only used by a small number of users.

How do you know that more users would rather have dd 5.1 than closed captions/subtitles? Certainly this forum does not represent the average user population out there ...

[redwein]

Re: Suggestions from new users!

I wonder who their target market is? Do they want to go mainstream? Are they going after the affluent techie/audiophile?

My point is that, no matter who they are going after, a rather small number of people use the feature. Obviously they need to deal with it at some point, but looking at the other things that have been requested, those other things are more likely to make a difference to more people and should be addressed first. You can only do so many things at once.

[mbustin]

Re: Suggestions from new users!

I still see subtitles and CC as one of those things that a small number of people find very important but most people never use. I have a lot of friends who watch TV, movies, etc. Not one of them ever uses them (unless it is a foreign film). Don't misunderstand me. I'm not saying they shouldn't do it. I'm just saying that delaying it makes sense if they can do other things that appeal to a larger percentage of their target market.

I wonder who their target market is? Do they want to go mainstream? Are they going after the affluent techie/audiophile?

[redwein]

Re: Suggestions from new users!

I still see subtitles and CC as one of those things that a small number of people find very important but most people never use. I have a lot of friends who watch TV, movies, etc. Not one of them ever uses them (unless it is a foreign film). Don't misunderstand me. I'm not saying they shouldn't do it. I'm just saying that delaying it makes sense if they can do other things that appeal to a larger percentage of their target market.

[timchen]

Re: Suggestions from new users!

Why suddenly I was throwing stone at Vudu?
Let's check what I did in this thread. Which part is stone throwing?

Post #15: I pointed out there are other people also providing VOD service. I also said closed caption is desired.
Post #19: explain there are two way to show captions, closed caption and DVD subtitle. And I explained how they work.
Post #21: I said it shouldn't be difficult to do it since almost every DVD has at least one of them.
Post #23: (for getting CC source) negotiate with studio, produce your own... it's up to Vudu to make it happens.

I mean Vudu is both the content and player vendor in this business model. It's really up to Vudu to support it ... or not.

Yes you can say HDMI does not support CC; yet don't forget other players with HDMI output just use subtitle to display cations.
Yes in your deal with studios didn't include CC source; yet studios have them, it's there with for ask.

I see so many excuses about why you didn't do it, I understand them. It would be nice if we also see statement like:
" Well, we don't have it right now since it's our REV 1 player. We will need to go back to negotiate with studios to get subtitle source. Once we embed them into bit stream, we can display it as CC when TV is selected output and we will have to print subtitle as HDMI is selected"

Yes I said earlier if Vudu keep a high price for box ($399) and only provide limited title for rent, Vudu may not sell over 100 boxes in the first month.
Yet Vudu lower price with a $100 coupon offer after two weeks, and throw in another $50 later, now there is no way to be sure I was right or wrong.

Please don't take so personally. That was my way to say Vudu needs to lower box price, provide a lot more titles. Otherwise Vudu may go out of business in several years.

timchen,

Why must you just sit there and throw stones the whole time at everything Vudu does and second guess everything? The fact is that Vudu knows this is something important. Of course, they want to do it. The fact that it didn't make it into rev 1.0 of the software means nothing about if the feature will be available in the future. Of course it can be done, but Vudu felt it more important to make sure they had deals with studios to provide plenty of content; they felt it important to make sure users had instant access to movies with good picture quality and an easy to use interface. There's a TON more features they want to add in the future and I would hazard to guess that this is one of them. It's better for Vudu to have what they have now with the product released in time for Christmas than to not have one or more of these important features yet have captioning. Only so much can be done in rev 1.0 of a product. Mac System 6 was not anything like OS X Leopard and Windows 95 is not what Vista is. So just because a product doesn't have a feature or capability when first released does not mean it won't have it later on.

But what do you care. Vudu is going to go out of business and won't even sell 100 boxes the first month according to you...

[RonV]

Re: Suggestions from new users!

Closed Captioning is a function of the TV set. The signal is embeded in the frame sync data and the TV does the decoding. There are 4 channels and usually only 1 or 2 channels contain data out of the 4.

Subtitles are an additional stream that was founded by the DVD working group. They are put into the stream by the decoding technology. The are hosted on the DVD as subpictures/bitmaps with clear backgrounds. Its my understanding that there is support in the current DVD standard for 32 differnet subpictures / subtitles in the VOB file that contains them.