
Walmart’s streaming service Vudu hits Apple TV - sib
https://techcrunch.com/2017/08/22/walmarts-streaming-service-vudu-hits-apple-tv/
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niftich
As of writing, Vudu offers content with a few different business models, but
none of them are based around a monthly subscription. This doesn't exist.

Instead, depending on the title, Vudu offers a short-term pay-per-view option
to "Rent" and a buy-once stream-anytime option to "Own". It has other content
that's accessible ad-supported for no fee.

Additionally, it's a participant in both UltraViolet and Disney's equivalent,
which are services that assert DRM authorizations, so Vudu will stream content
that UV or Disney asserts the user has rights for; retail discs' bonus
"Digital Copy" is handled this way, and they also offer a Vudu-branded
equivalent to a core UltraViolet service where you attest that you own a
physical copy, and they give you DRM rights for a digital copy at a low price
point.

In a way, this all sounds pretty arcane and complicated, and is a lot closer
to movie studios' and TV pay-per-view providers' mid-2000s view of the world
than to the landscape as envisioned by today's Netflix or Hulu -- but that
also sets Vudu apart. It's more comparable to iTunes, or Google Play, or
Amazon's for-purchase options, or even the Microsoft Store or the PlayStation
Network, or half a dozen other players in this space; most of which have a
tendency to be closely tied to a particular computing platform, often to the
point of that network being unavailable on the outside.

On that metric, Vudu offers multiplatform presence and longstanding
relationships with a wide range of movie studios, and seamless integration
into the studios' physical-to-digital ecosystem, but is woefully underutilized
by its corporate parent.

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bhhaskin
With the rise of all of these new streaming services I wonder if we will see a
golden age of internet piracy. No one is going to want to pay hundreds of
dollars a month just to get different brands of content.

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QAPereo
It's funny because I came from being a huge pirate as a young man, and then
like most people made the transition to paying for content once I had the
money to pay for content. Now it is beginning to swing the other way, and I'm
wondering why I pay three different services for essentially the same thing,
they all downgrade the video file, and this just so the same studio execs who
always fucked us decided to have another go?

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plopz
I think its better this way, coming closer to a la carte content, since I can
more accurately vote with my wallet and viewing habits and no longer subsidize
content I'm not interested in. I'm willing to accept a higher price for the
stuff I actually watch as a result.

~~~
codyb
I think the subsidation is actually kind of neat actually. I may subsidize a
ton of stuff I'll never watch for a bunch of other people but they're
simultaneously subsidizing a bunch of niche programs for me which may never
have been produced otherwise due to the niche nature of the content.

Similarly by buying the package deal instead of the individual content there's
mors opportunity for me to discover content I might otherwise never come
across just by having access to the opportunity to browse big long lists of
random stuff available to me.

In a way it allows me to both delve deeper into my bubble while also giving me
ways to escape it.

That being said, I kind of miss and sometimes return to the good ol' antenna
where a show may play once or twice and turn off. I never find binging a show
actually provides me anywhere near the enjoyment that watching a show once a
week and building anticipation does.

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marsrover
I don't have anything to add other than I had no idea Walmart owned Vudu.

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FussyZeus
Ditto, though it does explain why they push it in the Walmart app.

(For the uninitiated: if you buy a Blu Ray from Walmart that comes with a copy
through Vudu, you get notified if you use Walmart Pay to redeem it
immediately.)

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cabaalis
I have 2 Apple TV's, 3 Rokus. I've found that I never turn on my Apple TVs.
The only thing I lose is access to a few movies I bought on ITunes. The
walled-garden nature of Apple's ecosystem and their unwillingness to allow
other services full access is a total turnoff.

~~~
majormajor
You have to deal with Roku UX and their apps' UX then, though. The spotify
Roku app is a particularly terrible one when I tried a couple months ago. Went
back to the store and got a Chromecast later the same night.

(Spotify, of course, is also a problem on Apple TV, though - but overall I
find Chromecast + ATV, or FireTV, way better than Roku, if you've got the
budget. Or just Xbox One.)

~~~
raisedbyninjas
I rarely stream music through the home theater, but we prefer the Roku over
casting for anything except ad-hoc, youtube type clip watching.

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vinhboy
Vudu sounds an awful lot like Hulu...

That's like if someone made a burger chain called McDonny... Everyone would
recognize the connection immediately.

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niftich
Incidentally, the Vudu name pre-dates the public announcement of the 'Hulu'
name by at least one month, but has been attested for longer. The 'Hulu' name
was unveiled [1] in August 2007 for a then-unnamed project [2]. Vudu, on the
other hand, has trademark filings in July 2007, and was previously known as
Marquee, and before that, Vvond [3], but there are articles from earlier in
2007 already calling the company Vudu.

[1]
[https://web.archive.org/web/20070930180547/http://www.thestr...](https://web.archive.org/web/20070930180547/http://www.thestreet.com/s/googles-
still-on-top/newsanalysis/technet/10346071.html)

[2]
[https://web.archive.org/web/20070930180547/http://www.thestr...](https://web.archive.org/web/20070930180547/http://www.thestreet.com/s/googles-
still-on-top/newsanalysis/technet/10346071.html)

[3] [https://gigaom.com/2007/04/29/is-that-the-vudu-
magic/](https://gigaom.com/2007/04/29/is-that-the-vudu-magic/)

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X86BSD
I have only used Vudu a couple of times in the past. What I would be
interested in is a paper or someone able to tell me about their HDX format? I
was impressed with the visual quality of that when it first came out. Does
anyone have any details on that format?

~~~
niftich
A 2008 TechCrunch article has an uncited blockquote about it [1]. From that
verbiage, it appears it's H.264 produced with a good encoder, likely some
custom quantizer matrices (vs. the default flat matrices, to allocate less
detail to dark scenes and more to brighter scenes), less aggressive deblocking
(to reduce smudging and impart 'fake sharpness'), ABR-like capped VBR --
similar to bit-reservoir MP3; multi-pass encoding, some tunings for film grain
preservation (or emulation?), and maybe a sharpen filter.

If you've ever used x264, all of the above techniques are common advice to
encode film material, except for the use of multi-pass encoding, which is
being used by Vudu to make the file more CBR-like in the beginning, and
gradually attain VBR.

[1] [https://techcrunch.com/2008/10/02/vudu-officially-
announces-...](https://techcrunch.com/2008/10/02/vudu-officially-announces-
full-hd-service-hdx/)

~~~
X86BSD
Thank you very much! That is very interesting.

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majormajor
Handy, since it's frequently cheaper to get an HD digital copy of a movie by
buying the bundled Blu-Ray on Amazon at a deep discount then downloading on
Vudu than it is to buy the file from Amazon or Apple.

With a spare higher-quality Blu-Ray as a bonus!

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tyingq
I couldn't ever get closed captions to work on Vudu, so that killed it for me.

