Digital Home Thoughts - News & Reviews for the Digital Home

"Stop watching movies and TV shows according to Hollywood's schedule! With video-on-demand, you can watch TV whenever you want, wherever you want, and you don't even have to remember to program a box to record it. Here's MaximumPC's take on the major online VOD services available today."

Gizmodo has an informative article describing some of the major video-on-demand services. The article covers Amazon Instant Video, Blockbuster on Demand, CinemaNow, Crackle, Vudu, Hulu and Hulu Plus, the iTunes Store, and Netflix. A brief overview of each service, the content available through the service, and pricing, is provided. Users outside of the United States cannot access all these services but reading the service descriptions provides some insight as to how the services are differentiated and where this segment of the industry is headed.

"We've rubbed our eyes four or five times now, but the factual heat remains: Blockbuster -- of all companies -- has decided to dive headfirst into the movie set-top-box arena. We wanted to believe the rumors were false, but sure enough, it has joined VUDU, Apple TV, Roku and the Xbox 360 in the highly competitive market place for your digital download dollars. For a "limited time," the outfit will offer the 2Wire-built MediaPoint player for free with the "advance rental of 25 first-run movies, TV shows, foreign or classic films from Blockbuster On-Demand (previously Movielink) for $99." After that, rentals are $1.99 apiece, and a Blockbuster subscription is not required. The unit itself measures 8- x 8- x 1-inch and includes two USB ports, an SD slot, Ethernet / WiFi and an HDMI port, and it should be available at the company's website and in select retail stores very soon."

This has been rumored for a while and it hit the news today: Blockbuster has jumped into the set-top box business. While there are several other established options (Apple TV, VUDU, Tivo/Amazon, Roku/NetFlix, etc.), internet-delivered video-on-demand is still a very young market. Given Blockbuster's history, this is a logical step. The Blockbuster OnDemand library is seriously lacking, however. They only have about 2,500 movies available and it all appears to be SD content. It will be interesting to see how this whole market plays out!

Have you made a choice in the internet-delivered VOD space? Let me know in the comments.

"Santa Clara, CA, Nov. 11, 2008, -- VUDU announced today the availability of more than 1,100 HD titles for instant, on-demand viewing, giving the VUDU owners access to the largest library of HD content in existence. VUDU also pledged to continue to aggressively expand this HD library further in the coming weeks. The combination of this massive HD library, which spans mainstream new releases to independent titles and classics, with VUDU's two high quality HD formats, instant-start HD and the superior HDX format, make VUDU the most convenient and exciting choice for consumers who love HD content."
This press release is a couple weeks old but still worth mentioning. Over the past couple of months VUDU has been adding HD movies at a rate of 100-150 movies per week. As of this morning, there are more than 1300 HD movies listed on their site, including 202 HDX movies, in addition to their SD titles. I've had a VUDU for about year and have been pleased with the movie selection and quality. Their library has been growing at a rapid pace and the software is being regularly upgraded with new features; both positive signs.

Shortly before this announcement, Jason mentioned picking up a Blu-ray player. For now, I've decided to stick with digital streaming, the VUDU has become my primary choice. What's your opinion?