Vudu Set-Top Box Weds Legal P2P and HD Movies

prostoalex writes "The New York Times is running a story on a Silicon Valley company that is planning to revolutionize the movie business. It's no secret that the movie-going experience has been deteriorating, while the number of HDTVs sold has been rising steadily. A company called Vudu, run by a guy who started TiVo, is now building a box for peer-to-peer download of movies straight from the studios. That could enables the movie studios to make movies securely available to viewers on the day of release, and improves on the download experience offered by other shops, like Amazon Unbox, MovieLink and others: 'DVD sales began to stagnate because studios had finally plowed through their entire backlog of movies that could be released on the shiny discs. The success of iTunes was also proving that the digital transition was inevitable and that one powerful player, Apple, could control the market if Hollywood did not find other viable partners. And outlaw services like the pirate Web sites that use BitTorrent technology demonstrated that digital piracy, which had consumed the music business first, now posed a real problem for Hollywood.'"

How long?

Can somebody tell me how long will it take to hack into this box and reuse the code in some PC apps?
I don't think film studios are going to be particularly happy and enthusiastic about it. Plus of course it will need to use DRM. Which one? Most of them are

Re:

Can somebody tell me how long will it take to hack into this box and reuse the code in some PC apps?

It's not even built yet !! No, we can't tell you. How long is a piece of string ? ;)

Re:How long?

//How long is the piece of string?

From one end to another... ;)

Bad copy?

Vudu seems to be a copy of Apple TV. It has a similar-sized box with a similar aesthetic, and an equally sparse remote. What it adds over the Apple TV seems to be direct download without a computer, and a composite video out. There's also no mention of podcast support, which is the real innovation from the Apple TV, in my mind.

Am I missing something? Is this really revolutionary? (Not that the Apple TV is either, but it's probably the best-known set-top box with podcast support.)

Re:

Oh, and the peer-to-peer dimension of this box is merely a marketing and implementation detail--people equate "P2P" with "free," but the average movie lover could care less that the Vudu does P2P, unless their broadband is metered and they get a nasty surp

Re:Bad copy?

It's revolutionary because this time the DRM is going to work.

Re:

The DRM is going to work because it's implemented in a closed system?
Wow, you better run out and tell Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony!
All of them have put closed hardware in peoples living rooms and NONE of them have been hacked!

</sarcasm>

Re:Bad copy?

It's revolutionary because this time the DRM is going to work.

See my .sig

Michael

Re:

What it adds over the Apple TV seems to be direct download without a computer

You've answered your own question genius! People want their device to just work, not have to fuck round setting up a PC for it to hook into.

Costs for the user?

According to market analysist Nicholas Donatiello Jr quoted in the article, the ball park could be $300 for the box and between $6 adn $10 per movie. But they didn't touch on the bandwidth/data costs to the user - and as they are going with a peer-to-peer system, each customer will be donating some of their upload bandwidth too (possibly even when not watching a movie).

Re:

A better idea would be to put a high speed downloading machine into the local video rental store. The store could download the top ten Hollywood movies in high res (or get a shipment of disks). Then the home movie viewer/renter could bring a hard disk or

5,000 videos of rubbish

The box's biggest asset is raw speed: the company says the films will begin playing immediately after a customer makes a selection.

Either this is going to be limited in which areas it is deployed or else this is hyperbole of the extreme. I doubt it will be able to deliver instantaneous playing straight for people no matter where they are in America as there are many places that do not have broadband.

If Vudu succeeds, it may mean goodbye to laborious computer downloads, sticky-floored movie theaters and cable companies' much narrower video-on-demand offerings.

Good luck with that. However the technology to release movies simultaneously with theatre releases has existed for some time (VHS), and every major studio released their stuff on VHS, but somehow managed to delay the VHS release until after the theatre release in most cases. I don't see anything in Vudu's offering that is likely to change this. Also if this requires I have an internet connection (it was a little light on that detail) then it won't do very well as people typically do not want their internet connection slowing to a halt because little billy wants to 101 Dalmatians. Also it doesn't mention if I will be able to burn my movie onto a DVD. If I can then what sort of DRM am I going to get encumbered with? If not, then I don't see these replacing DVDs (or Bluray/HDDVD). People like to be able to take a movie to their friends place without their friend needing to have a Vudu. Now unless Vudu quickly becomes cheaper then DVDs, I see this being too large a hurdle for it to overcome.

Re:

When you sit closer to the screen, you don't WANT a screen the same size as a theatre. (Ever sat on the front row? Too close/big!)

I have a simple 800X600 projector (so movies are standard def) showing on a 7' diagonal screen, and it's nearly as enjoyable

Do people care?

while the number of HDTVs sold has been rising steadily.

I see statements like that and wonder if it is truely rising or if it's just that HDTVs are comming down steadily in price and so rather than wanting a HDTV they just buy the best set of features (aka what the sales guy says) which happens to be the latest TV. This would explain why more HDTVs are slowly being sold while the interest level (as far as I can see) is very low even among people with HDTV consoles which would benefit from them.

But I suppose HDTV is much like Vista. We have no real control over the market, we have a market for both (HDTV and normal TVs/Vista and XP) until the makers decide the pull the plug and we're forced to one option even if we hate it.

So....

Their box is planning to upload HDTV vids through average people's internet connection? Most people have enough downloading, thank you. Something tells me QoS routers will get very popular if this catches on. P2P is a great way to "chip in" your bandwidth without actually setting up a central system. If you've set up a central system already, bandwidth is much cheaper and more available centrally than it is for me. With my DSL line I'm basicly capped at whatever they are able to deliver, and I hardly think I'm alone in that. The marginal price for me to have another Mbit of upload capacity is ca. infinite, or at least some ungodly expensive business connection. Easynews offers 20GB download for $10, which is about the same infrastructure Vudu would need to have. I'd easily rather pay 10$ to Vudu than upload 20GB over my connection.

Something seems off here...

From TFA: "It has built a small Internet-ready movie box that connects to the television and allows couch potatoes to rent or buy any of the 5,000 films now in Vudu's growing collection. The box's biggest asset is raw speed: the company says the films will begin playing immediately after a customer makes a selection." Two points. One, the article also makes note of the rise in HDTV sets - if that's indeed the case, wouldn't one selling point be the opportunity to offer movies in some fairly high-definition format (at LEAST DVD-quality)? Even for folks with broadband, most won't have the bandwith to pull down a DVD-or-better quality movie quickly enough to watch in real-time. The other point is the "rent or buy" verbiage - what defines 'renting' or 'buying' (normally I'd only have to ask what defines renting, but considering how the major movie/music studios have handled DRM, one must include buying in that request)? When the article says renting, do they mean along similar lines to what you might receive from a movie store, 3 days and then it goes away? Or do they mean something like purchasing a single viewing, along the lines of what you'd get in a movie theater - if the latter's the case, why the heck would I want to "rent" a new movie for almost the same price as going to see it in theaters? Even the best home setups really just can't compare to watching a movie at the theater, especially with some films being available at IMAX theaters and the like. This brings to light the question of the pricing scheme - new movies more costly than old? More popular movies have floating costs that increment with every X number of downloads? These are things I wouldn't put it past the MPAA to try and implement, and they'd spell a DOA right out of the gate for a service that's trying to supplant internet piracy. After all, you still just can't beat $Free.99 for price.

Deteriorating?

It's no secret that the movie-going experience has been deteriorating

How so? What has changed? Are the seats less comfy? Is the pop corn less crunchy? Is the sound less ugh-please-turn-the-bass-down-or-i-am-going-to-bar fy? Or is it that the home theater experience is improving with respect to the real theater experience so it makes you say it's deteriorating?

Re:Deteriorating?

• People chatting instead of watching the movie. The entire length. (happend to me more than once)
  
• Whining kids.
  
• Doors not closing automatically when the movie starts, so either you try to ignore the outside glare (really great if the opening scene is quite dark) or you get up and close the door yourself. Which is usually reopened a few minutes later by late people who are looking for a seat. They do this either chatting, either blocking your field of view. Or even worse, they ask you to move from your seat which you have occupied for the last half hour because you were in time and wanted to have a decent position in the theater (relative to the screen) in a chair that is not falling apart.
  
• One of the sound boxes fails half way, and keeps churning throughout the remainder.
  
• They start playing the wrong movie.
  
• Sound system is badly adjusted. Or it's so loud, your ears ring for hours afterwards.
  
• The sound from the theater above,below,right, left is seeping through the walls.
  
• Misaligned picture.
  
• Subtitles (with DVD I can finally turn them off)
  
• Toilet fee.
  
• Overpriced food and you are not allowed to bring your own.
  
• Overpriced tickets. Spend a few euros more and you can buy the dvd after a few months.
  
• 20 minutes of commercials, and that amount just keeps rising.
  
• etc.

You're right. Nothing has changed. It has always been crappy. But now we finally have a choice. We can watch at our home theater. I don't want to go to the theater anymore. And when I do, I go with friends. I see it then as a social event and just hope the theater experience that evening isn't too bad. Dinner, movie and bar. Most of the weeks we just skip the movie.

Re:

Or perhaps our perception and tolerance has changed.
As kids we didn't care or did it ourself. As adults, who can't go everyday or to every move and who don't have two months of summer vacation, we just want to watch the movie and not be annoyed by bored k

Apple's a bad example.

And outlaw services like the pirate Web sites that use BitTorrent technology demonstrated that digital piracy, which had consumed the music business first, now posed a real problem for Hollywood.

Which is crap on both fronts. Peer-to-peer has hardly "consumed" the music business, last I heard they were still in business and making money. Unless he means that P2P has consumed an unreasonable amount of attorney's fees lately. I'd agree with that.

This guy is just trying to make this appear to be a proactive solution to a problem the movie houses really aren't experiencing yet, hoping that one or more of them will jump on the bandwagon.

The success of iTunes was also proving that the digital transition was inevitable and that one powerful player, Apple, could control the market if Hollywood did not find other viable partners.

No, the success of iTunes has, if anything, taught the movie industry that the very last thing it wants is content distribution run by a high-powered technology company with both the money and the balls to tell the studios "here's the deal - take it or leave it."

Both the music and the movie industries have long shown themselves to be anti-technology control freaks. Unless they can own this technology they'll never go for it, and if they did own it they'd lock it down so tightly that we would never go for it.

I can't argue that the DVD was a phenomenal success, but that was because the average user wasn't left feeling too restricted. The reason he felt that way was because he generally just played his movies on his living room TV, and never needed to rip his data to some other format. That's changing, not to the level that music reproduction has changed but it's happening, and when enough people can't legally or practically move their movies to other devices the same problems will arise.

"their entire backlog of movies"? Yeah Right...

Just as an example of some items I am unable to buy on DVD here in australia but would like to own:
Snow White (the pre-WW2 Disney classic)
The Real Ghostbusters (the 80s cartoon)
Tales Of The Gun (History Channel documentary series)
Other History Channel documentaries
Space Above And Beyond
Hey Dad (classic Aussie sitcom)

Even if you account for the fact that some of them (like some of the History Channel stuff) may in fact be available if you are willing to import from America, there are still plenty of movies and TV episodes that you just plain can't get legally on DVD or from ANY download service anywhere in the world.

Re:"their entire backlog of movies"? Yeah Right...

I've got modpoints, and I consider it a sign of my maturity that I don't smack you down for wanting to own "Hey, Dad!"

Voodoo or Snake Oil?

This device sounds like a win for the MPAA/movie industry and a big loss for the consumer. Lets see how this device functions:

1. You have to buy an expensive box. Most services like this offer the device cheap or free. Satellite boxes, cable boxes, TIVOs, all are or can be free with service plans.

2. Peer-to-peer transfers. Sure, they say they are doing this to offer instantaneous availability of content, but it is just an excuse to shift the bandwidth cost to the end user. And, it doesn't just work exactly like BitTorrent. With BitTorrent, you are only uploading while the transfer takes place. This box uses every box as a source, all the time. If your box has a copy of a movie on it, it will upload it whenever someone else needs it. It doesn't sound like this service should be any more expensive than any other. If YouTube can afford to send me internet-quality video for the few pennies they get from my add revenues, Vudu can afford to send me DVD-quality video for the 10 bucks I'm paying them to buy their movie.

3. End-to-end DRM, vendor lock-in. This is why they're so popular with the studios. While freeing people from the "tyranny" of the computer, they simultaneously give up their best chance at circumventing draconian controls.

4. No DVD burner of any kind. This is the Achilles heel. They offer the option to "rent" or "purchase" downloads. For the 'rent' option, the file obviously deletes itself after a fixed amount of time. What about the movies I purchase? If it were on a computer I could make a backup copy on another hard drive or a DVD. With this, that option does not exist. The device's hard drive, however large, has a finite capacity. Once that fills up, whoops, what are you supposed to do? I guess you have to delete one of the movies you "bought." If they address this at all, they might let you re-download movies you delete. Regardless, it is at their discretion.

5. Bandwidth. Very few people have Ethernet jacks next to their television. For many people, this will leave wireless as their only option. With wireless, I would be skeptical of its ability to cope with the massive upload/download requirements. Even if it can cope, the necessity to either lay Ethernet cables down or configure a wireless network is completely antithetical towards the plug-and-play, instant gratification consumer they're targeting. They're trying to package a computer in a format your Luddite grandmother won't recognize as a computer, while simultaneously requiring her to configure a wireless network.

In summary, to use this system, I have to buy an expensive box, I have to pay for all the bandwidth, and I have absolutely no control over the files I download. This device is about one thing, control. Control of content and control of consumers.

As much as I would like to see no DRM, I will admit that Apple figured out how to do DRM right with iTunes. The basic principle they applied was, "we will make the new format no more restrictive than the old format." Like CDs, FairPlay lets you burn as many CD copies as you want of files. It also lets you back up your files to multiple computers. Vudu's box ties all of my purchases to the lifetime of a single piece of hardware, offering no backup solutions, total DRM, and a system that's designed to screw over the consumer at every single turn.

I hope this is not the way that the industry is going. I don't think the Vudu box will be a great success. However, they may still find enough people who want something that "just works" to find a market. Regardless, it will fall upon the usual legion, the modern fighters for freedom, the hackers and crackers to break the chains of DRM and vendor-lock in. It may be easier to crack something when it's on the computer, but being a stand-alone box hasn't saved the XBox, Playstations, and innumerable other devices from being opened in the same way.

Ultimately, the studios know this. They simply want the circumvention to be so difficult that 95% of users will not attemp

Re:

The one thing commercial P2P companies always seem to forget is to compensate the end user for their bandwidth. If they tracked how much you upload and "purchased" your bandwidth using store credit or something, then this might be a viable model. However

on second thought, this is good

My first reaction was: why should I provide free hosting for a commercial vendor of video? Let them pay for their own hosting and bandwidth.

But, come to think of it, if a service like this legitimizes large upstream bandwidth, we all win. One of the biggest threats to the Internet is still that upstream bandwidths become limited. So, from that point of view, I'm all for commercial P2P. I can still give its traffic low priority at the router.