VuDu - will this set-top box deliver more than buzz?

The blogosphere is predictably abuzz about VuDu - darkhorse set top instant movie purchase box. NYT dropped the story first, Giz had first UI and hardware pics, and Engadget’s got comprehensive coverage from the top of the pile on Techmeme.

Somewhere in that mass of coverage, I read the thought that I think will sum up the un-appeal of the concept for many: paying $300 for a set top device to have the privilege of paying $6-10 more for movies is a long stretch. Especially when you find out that movies are stuck on the VuDu box and can’t be transferred to your iPod, DVD burner, or anywhere else. In fact, VuDu seems to be about as weak a value proposition as the original crippleware divx disc format. Lots of hype, major studio support, DRM all over, and expensive - sounds like exactly the sort of system that the status-quo players wish would dominate the market.

AppleTV and the XBox360 enable much the same sort of transaction; but in their cases, that business model is buried in a tonne of other value-added functionality that empowers users. In the “battle for the living room,” Apple and Microsoft are taking a tactful, user-centric (though by no means perfect) approach, while VuDu is taking a ham-fisted, compromised flailing swing at it in the clueless style of the RIAA and MPAA.

Yes, I am biased against crippled functionality models like this, and no, I don’t know all of the details, so who knows - I could be embarrassingly wrong. Engadget seems to have come to a similar conclusion though, Mathew Ingram seems to agree, NewTeeVee’s quotes David Zatz’s assessment that Vudu will go the way of Akimbo or MovieBeam - nowhere fast. Paul Stamatiou asks a lot of intelligent questions about pricing and control structure, well Rex Dixon sounds reservedly optimistic.

As for myself, I’ll go on record as having the opinion that this has too many big studio business paw prints on it to take off.

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 29th, 2007 and is filed under News and Opinions. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.