Walmart Entertainment’s Disc-to-Digital Service Powered by VUDU - Page 5

Actually Vudu started out this way but they stopped making hardware that would do downloads. There may be others that do downloads.

I saw the revenue (not profit) total for 2011 that included most of the PPV/VOD IPTV providers (Vudu, Amazon, Blockbuster, CinemaNow, iTunes, PSN, etc.) and it was a small number especially when one considers the number of capable devices in consumers hands.

What are the chances of an HD DVD to HDX digital copy for $2?

Probably zero.

But might be worth a try. Worst they could do is say "no."

VUDU also did peer-to-peer which was rather surprising to me (when I purchased their box).

Vudu requires home broadband Internet connection to deliver movies. Users are given the option of watching a selected movie now or watching it later. The first couple of seconds of every movie within the catalog is loaded onto the Vudu Box's hard drive, ensuring instant playback when the user chooses to watch a given film. The remainder of the movie is delivered to the box via an exclusive peer-to-peer network.

With the bandwidth I had at the time it was roughly 6 hours (or more) before the movie was downloaded (in HD). Even if I wasn't downloading and or streaming the box would grab my Internet and go crazy... either downloading the beginning of titles or copying my content to other customers.

The device and especially the remote was very cool...

http://gizmodo.com/297309/VUDU-video...ckbusterbuster

Yeah, those early VUDU boxes could be a pain in the butt. I had friends with them that hated them, and I was so glad when the app started appearing on other devices.

I got three of them back in late 2007/early 2008. Mine always worked great. I still have them but I haven't plugged them in a while.

IF they have electrolytic capacitors (most consumer gear does) then I would turn them on from time to time. Those type capacitors will dry out over a period of time from non use and will short out when the equipment is switched on.

Just curious, if they were good devices why aren't you still using them?

I bet that made the studios real happy!

They only had HDMi 1.1 or 1.2(can't remember which). So they can only send out DD. Plus I have other devices(like my Boxee Boxes) that have the Netflix app, that are newer and offer more than the older Vudu boxes.

I did like the download feature though. I would download the contentr prior to going over to my GFs house. And we could watch it in HD. But with just streaming, she only has a slow DSL connection, so I could only get SD. So we don't watch any more VUDU titles there any more since I've only been taking a either a Boxee Box, TiVo, and/or a Roku2 over there.

What about a laptop with HDMI? I picked up a $400 laptop for my general use with HDMI and a 500GB HD. At least you could copy movies over to it and not deal with the variability or restricted bandwidth of DSL. That is the primary reason I just put movies locally on my laptop. When I travel I never know how bad the hotel data service is going to suck. Usually I can count on it sucking to some extent.

Just to spell this out a little more clearly...

CDs are not encrypted, because the format specs were established in the '70s and '80s. However, DVDs and Blu-rays are encrypted (with CSS and AACS). Although both DVD and Blu-ray encryptions have been cracked, legally it is a violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to circumvent the encryption.

While it's unlikely that any studio would attempt to prosecute you for ripping a DVD or Blu-ray for personal use, a service like iTunes cannot legally support the uploading of files that were created in an explicit violation of the DMCA.

Because CDs are not encrypted, there is no violation of the DMCA when you rip a CD (so long as it's for personal use, and you don't try to sell it). That's why it's OK for iTunes to allow you to upload those music files ripped from a CD, but not movie files ripped from a DVD or Blu-ray.

Just to keep things in the clear:

1. It has not been decided yet if the DMCA restriction trumps copyright/fair use. It simply hasn't been in the courts as of yet with an individual performing such on their own legitimate copy of a DVD/BR title. At best it is a grey area.

2. The provision in the DMCA is in the 'trafficking' of tools to crack CSS/BR+ etc... Legal experts have pondered that question and tend to take the side that as an end user dl'ing something like AnyDVD HD and Handbrake would not be considered 'trafficking'.


Agreed studios won't sue legitimate end users. It is unlikely for a myriad of reasons including the possibility of losing said case and the public relations nightmare it would cause.

Private clouds are now going to start coming out in droves from players big and small. No way for MPAA to fleece them all and make them sign on to the typical Mafia payola protection racquet. With the advent of home ISP service offering unmitigated 2.5Mbps UPSTREAM this is totally possible to do from your own home even.

Exciting times we live in

Just a guess, but I suspect you're thinking of Sony's SACD copy protection of its DSD content, which was supposed to be unbreakable. It took about 10 years to do it, but late last year hackers finally broke the DSD copy protection scheme, but it only works in very limited circumstances. My understanding is that you have to have an early model Sony Playstation 3 (before Sony changed something in it to prevent capturing the stream directly) and some additional hardware and software to do it.

The interesting thing of note is how it's adoption is under 1% vs more consumer friendly methods. They locked it up alright

Yeah, it's only a tiny footnote with regard to music formats and DRM, but I am very impressed at how "unbreakable" the DSD encryption was, as far as "unbreakable" encryption is concerned. Ten years or so is quite the long time to stand unbroken.

Remember all that D*TV card hacking stuff in the late 90s? That was some big business, most of it out of Canada. It all came crumbling down with hundreds of civil suits and criminal prosecutions (and some bad PR for D*TV) and finally a new kind of encryption keys and scheme. As far as I know, the new system has remained unbroken.

Yep DSD encryption was so effective all they managed to do was eat a very small pie. They pretty much got the entire pie though

All people do now is get four pre-programmed DVR's installed and then ship three off to their friends and have them purchase a used dish on Craigslist. Split the cost 4 ways.

If you really want to doom a an entire class of product to obscurity just make it a PIA for the public to use.

I agree that in principle and in practice, the history of copy protection schemes, beginning with Macrovision for VHS, has been a lesson in how to alienate your customer base and to fail miserably at preventing piracy in the long run. I suspect that if you could gather reliable statistics, then they would show that ultimately placing copy protection schemes in place actually encourages more piracy than you would have without them, not to mention frustrating a large proportion of your legitimate customers with technical failures and incompatibilities due to the copy protection.

Multi channel audio only just never caught on, DVD-Audio really did not do much better in the market than SACD. Plus working with 1 bit signals (DSD) is a PITA. That is the reason most of the production work is done in PCM. So I doubt the outcome would have been any different if the SACDs had not encrypted.


When I was a subscriber Dish Network & DirecTV required a phone line connection if you had two or more receiving devices to guard against this very thing. Have they dropped that requirement?

If I recall, one of the primary reasons Sony/Philips came up with the SA-CD format was that the royalty period was due to run out on their previous format, the CD, when one format stops making you money, design a new one.

As far as the multi-channel formats go, I have a small collection of both SA-CD and DVD-Audio recordings but the best by far are those from AIX Records, these are some spectacular high resolution, large dynamic range, recordings. If you have a device capable of playing the format and you love great sounding music, pick one or two of these up, you won't regret it.

The only requirement that I know about is that you needed the phone line for PPV.

Yeah, the "phone home" requirement is really only to report PPV purchases since the last billing period. If you disconnected your phone line, you could no longer purchase new PPVs once your 25 or so slots filled up. If you never reconnected your phone line, the system never knew to bill you for those.

These days, the phone line is outmoded. If you have your DTV receiver hooked up to your LAN, that's all you need to get PPVs. You do not need it connected in order to view non-PPV television, despite what customer service reps routinely told customers on the phone. I remember many reports in the past of customers being told that the TV signal came through the phone line, so they better not disconnect the phone cord. I wonder how many customers bought that, and then later wondered what the hell the dish antenna was for if that were true?

Any word when walmart will be allowing me to take by Blurays in to get them put on my vudu account?
I do have a couple of other questions:
1. If I take in a bluray I will get a 1080p version for $2?
2. I have a vacation home so with this stored on my Vudu account I can access it from both homes on different networks?
3. How is the audio quality?
4. WHEN?

A:
1. Yes if available on VUDU, DVD->HDX is $5.
2. Yes.
3. HDX is 5.1, SD is 2.0.
4. Still unknown.

http://forum.vudu.com/showthread.php?t=82421

I think they should offer a software download that you install on your PC, when you insert your DVD/BD it will send the Gracenote info to VUDU where you can buy online.

I thought it was starting on 4/16/12?

The last remark by a VUDU employee on that thread I linked was on 3/14, they never responded to further questions. I searched the internet for more recent official statements but found nothing, it's like the disc to digital service is in limbo.

The Press release says April 16th. It doesn't sound like it's in Limbo to me. They gave a specific date. And the Walmart site and the Vudu site both have links to it.

http://walmartstores.com/pressroom/news/10824.aspx

http://www.vudu.com/disc_to_digital_press_release.html

http://www.vudu.com/disc_to_digital.html

Any word what walmarts will be participating?

~4000 as of now.
http://www.homemediamagazine.com/dig...tal-title-list

Here is the form you will have to fill out for discs you want converted:


Here is the stamp you will get:


http://paidcontent.org/2012/04/11/wa...cloud-service/