Master Vudu discussion - place to talk about your Vudu experience - Page 8

I just checked with one of my VUDUs. It showed around 9 watts while watching a movie and around 18 when booting up. I'll have to check out the UPS on one of my other VUDUs to see what that shows. Plus I don't know how accurate Powerchute is or the info it's getting from the APC UPS. Since that does seem lower than I expected.

Although I guess the most accurate way would be to get a watt meter that you stick inline with the devices power cord. I think my brother or Dad has one so I'll see if I can borrow it sometime.

Thanks,

I don't think power will be a problem standing it on its side.

k

How did I miss this for $99? GRRRR! I wanted one so bad. I'm already in the process of selling off many of my BDs because there is no replay value for some of them - much rather stick to renting on a whim.

Yeah...oh well. They'll dip back down again in a few weeks I'm sure.

I bought it last week for $99, lucky perhaps. I considered the wireless bundle for $149 (with the box) but missed that by a day so I simply bought the box for $99.

By the way, I think it is a bit risky to offer a $99 special and then back to $299. Now people may wait for another "special" price before buying in. Of course they could use the price of entry to limit subscriber growth to allow them to profitably grow their server base with out suddenly overwhelming it.

Mine just got delivered yesterday.

Definitely a polished consumer-grade product. Setup was a breeze (wireless kit). Everything "just worked." Interface is top-notch. Selection is good, not perfect obviously. Only had time to watch some trailers and the HDX free demo and add about 50 films to my wishlist. Hopefully will get to watch something tonight, tomorrow for sure.

Some comments -
1) product is clearly the best in the marketplace right now. Looking back, comparisons to Akimbo are hilarious. Clearly made by people that had never tried Vudu. Selection is better than netflix, quality is better than netflix, and the hardware is better than the roku box.

2) Price point is too high at $299. I love this thing, but would never have purchased at $299 (without wireless no less). It's just not going to sell at that level. I bought at $149 and that's probably the limit, maybe $199 would do OK, $99 with wireless would be ideal. This is of course, is not based on what hardware cost, box capability, or how good the experience is, just based on what the public will consider "competing products" in this class - that is Roku, blu-ray streaming players, etc, and what I bet the average person is willing to pay to play with an "unknown" player.

3) Service will live and die by content. I wish I could get rid of netflix altogether, but there are still too many new titles that arent available, or even more so, slightly older releases that go out of catalog due to licensing agreements. 300? Gladiator? LOTR?

I really hope Vudu makes it. The idea of high quality VOD is the future. The cable co's could clearly do something to challenge, but based on the quality and performance of their DVR (not to mention the actualy PQ/AQ and selection of their titles) I'm not holding my breath.

Whether it's Vudu, Cable, Netflix, XstreamHD etc, something like this is the future. I just hope in this case, the best product wins (or at least survives) and we arent stuck with something like Netflix streaming "HD" or the current crop of low-quality cable VOD solutions.

bald

edit: Almost forgot, even my wife was impressed. "it's like you're not even using the internet." Not sure praise comes much higher than that.

with the apparent demise of XstreamHD - it looks like Vudu may be the best bet. Apple does not seem to be investing in their platform. Netflix could be the most compelling but it seems to be a lower quality offering. XstreamHD was the most compelling offering but it looks like it was vaor ware

I did a search of the spin off thread and this thread for "projector" and nothing came up. Can VUDU be used with a projector? I have a 720p projector. My video is HDMI but the audio is optical into the receiver. Is this possible with the VUDU? Also my screen is 14' wide so I am concerned about the quality of the image. DVDs look good and Blue Ray looks really good. How does VUDU compare with either of these.
Thanks-

I have my Vudu running thru my Anthem D2 then out to my Sony Pearl projector and the hd and hdx images are great the sd is about equal to dvd.

I just hooked mine up last night and I am impressed. First of all it is much smaller than I expected. I did not stand it up on end, instead taking advantage of the rubber isolation feet.

It has an optical output (left of the HDMI connector) for the above poster. I use the HDMI to feed my Denon and then onto my front projector with a 119" diagonal, so far the image quality is every bit as good as anything out there. Click to enlarge.



If there is a better mousetrap than this I would sure like to know about it. It has a section of $0.99 movies with a generous selection. We did one of these after our box was up 5 minutes. Today I am scheduling an HDX download from work so that I have it ready to go tonight. I will even try a regular HD title to check out that quality.

I think Vudu is the last thing you need to worry about, if you are satisfied with DVD, and 720p, on a screen that wide.

I watch almost exclusively HDX on my 10' wide screen with RS20. Some times I watch HD because I don't have time to download the movie due to the bandwidth limitation, but SD, I avoid due to the quality. However, I avoid DVD's as well.

SD vs HD/HDX

I just got my Vudu and have hooked it up to an infocus X1 via 480p component projecting on about a 70" diagonal screen - I was planning on watching mostly SD based material as it is cheaper. I am mostly satisfied with the appearance of DVDs on this setup, would I notice much a difference between SD and HD? I assume I would with HDX, but I'm mostly interested in instant watching. Is there a difference in the quality of the surround encoding between SD and HD? My audio is decidedly higher end than my video. I was planning on trying it out with Apaloosa today, not sure if the HD is worth it over the SD version?

bald

I doubt you'd notice anything different with only 480p.

No offence, but where did I state I was satisfied? I said DVD looks good-as it is up-scaled through either a state of the art (when purchased) Faroudja chip in my changer and a state of the art (when purchased) Reon HQV in my player, or Silicone Optics in my projector. Or did you mean the Vudu is not going to give me a better image? My projector is a couple of years old so I am looking for equipment that will not be of lesser quality when I move to 1080p. I looked at a lot of projectors, and sent/returned several, before getting my 720p. It looked better than any of the 1080p projectors including Runco, Sony, JVC, etc. When I see a projector that gives me a better picture than mine, 720p or 1080p, I will replace mine and use my 720p for outside viewing-great bright picture. I, like you, prefer HD over SD/DVDs. I don't think I have purchased a DVD for myself since HD DVDs hit the market.
Thanks for the info.-

Just watched Apaloosa in SD. Overall pretty good quality. I think I would have to have the DVD and VuduSD side-by-side in order to notice much difference. Some of the scenes looked sort of soft, and the dark scenes struggled some, but I imagine that has as much to do with the age and quality of my projector as anything else. I was probably paying closer attention than usual. Sound I think was at least as good as DVD.

Now if only everything was rentable, I could cancel netflix and quit visiting mailboxes. The studios really need to get their **** together and stop hamstringing services like Vudu.

bald

Sorry, I didn't mean for my comment to be taken as a dig against your system. I am sure I could have phrased that better.

All I was trying to say was that the VUDU box would not be the limiting factor in your current set up. I also was going by a misunderstanding of your post, that you were satisfied with DVD quality.

Moving up the scale, with the very best projectors capable of resolving full resolution, I have compared VUDU HDX along side the same title on Blu-Ray, and it is pretty close, even on a large screen.

The biggest limitation, as I see it, is the source material. For example, Bald mentioned above, the SD version of Appaloosa looking a bit soft. Well, I watched it in HDX, and it still was not a Wow quality source material. I have also watched some HD titles on VUDU that looked worse than SD, and some that looked almost as good as HDX.

Can someone point me to the supported sound formats over HDMI? I watched an HDX movie last night and the picture was outstanding but I noticed my receiver not showing 5.1, maybe I need a setting adjustment or something? Any how I enabled PLIIx to fill all of my 7.1 channels.

Perhaps this particular HDX movie did not have 5.1??? I thought all HDX had 5.1.

Still too expensive when this $99 last week. They will bring the price down again. Even $149 with $50 worth of rentals would be fine. No way would I spend $299 and have $200 worth of rentals not knowing how long the service would be available.

I did not use the bestbuy deal, but I heard the $200 in credits have to be used within 4 months anyway...someone corrrect me if I'm wrong.

Incidentally, I'm a new Vudu owner - pretty impressed. I also agree though, I did the $149 for the box + wireless adapter, and love the box, but never would have invested @ $299, credits or otherwise.

bald

While we always request 5.1 soundtracks, sometimes they are not available. It could be that the movie is older and the studio hasn't invested in remastering the audio or they simply don't make a 5.1 soundtrack available to us. We do show what the audio format is in the details of the movie however, so you can confirm what format it is before purchase. This is on both the box itself and the web. What title did you watch?

Regarding audio formats, for both HDMI the digital audio outputs, both PCM stereo and a Dolby Digital bitstream are available. It should be fine out of the box, but you can choose which you want under the audio settings.

I agree. A lot of titles I'm interested in watching are only available to own.
As far as I'm concerned, the movie library is ok. A lot of it is just filled with **** titles that were direct to video. I can't believe they don't have one single John Wayne movie in their library and they only have about half of the AFI's top 100 films of all time. I know the studios are mostly to blame for this, but the vudu library has a long way to go.

Thanks Patrick,

The Forbidden Kingdom. I don't see where it is listed as 5.1 on audio online ... maybe when I get home I can check again.

I did not check under audio settings of the box. I guess I need to check it out. I must have assumed since I passed the setup test (audio and video) with only HDMI connected that all was o.k.

Click on the "Rent From" button here and it will show you the options. It should have been in 5.1 for you.

FYI, we've got 44 movies in which John Wayne was involved. There happens to be a bug right now in which if you search for the actor exactly like "John Wayne" (yeah, that's a fun one), you don't get any results, but if you find a John Wayne movie, say "The Shootist" and click on his name you'll find them all. Or if you search for "Wayne" he's in there.

Patrick,

Is there a day of the week/month when "coming soon" typically gets updated?

bald

It varies based on the specific title. Note that just because something doesn't appear in coming soon, it doesn't mean we won't get it.

Why is there no HD/HDX version for Indiana Jones?

Why isn't Eagle Eye available?