Suggestions

[gregg098]

I have a few suggestions which might attract more people.

1) Either allow rentals to be available longer after you start watching or have some sort of re-rental discount where you can hold the title for longer for a fraction of the cost. Sometimes I get caught up in things in the middle of a movie and it would be nice to maybe just come back the next day and not have to re-rent.

2) If you rent a movie, have a discount to purchase it. For example. If you pay $2.99 for a rental and like it, then discount $2.99 off of the purchase price for the next 24 hours.

3) Media center extender. I know this has been beat to death already, but this would be a great feature. Especially DivX/xVid support. Even just enabling the USB ports for flash drives and external hard drives to allow playback on TV would be great.


Just my 2 cents. Its a great product with a lot of potential for growth. Cant wait to see whats coming.

[Nded]

Re: Suggestions

Your preaching to the choir. Hopefully in time all three will happen.

[MaxH]

Re: Suggestions

As for #1, please note that Vudu has already negotiated 48 hour rentals from all the independent studios. You can find them by filtering by Studio and Available to Rent when searching for movies. The more we take advantage of this, the better the chance the big studios will decide to jump on board.

[NA9D]

Re: Suggestions

Your points are all 100% valid but have been requested by nearly everyone. For items #1 and #2, Vudu has no control but to negotiate with the Studios. They are working the best deals possible but right now the studios have all the say in these matters.

For #3, it's a good idea and the box has the horsepower and and hardware to make it happen, but the whole goal of Vudu has been to give the user the most awesome video on demand experience of movie content that they have focused first on perfecting that. Down the road, I hope other capabilities of the box are exploited.

[mbustin]

Re: Suggestions

Now that viewing perions for rentals differ by studio (24 vs 48 hrs ), perhaps the viewing window can be displayed when viewing movie info. I think it only displays AFTER you rent the movie - I could be wrong, but it would be nice to know beforehand.

[Nded]

Re: Suggestions

Actually, the Vudu shows you the rental period (hours and days till expire) when you click on the Rent It button (before you confirm the purchase). There will be some movies that have a shorter than 30 day viewing window, so it is good to keep an eye on this when making your purchases.

That said, I do think it would be better to have the 24/48/?? hour viewing data show up earlier in the menuing. I'll post this as a feature request (but it might already be one of the gazillion new features already on the schedule...).

[NA9D]

Re: Suggestions

mbustin -

GREAT IDEA. I've wanted this myself sometimes. And while the rule right now is that the 48 hour window is the indie studios, it's not all indie studios (one or two holdouts at this point). But as more and more studios come on line with this rental policy, it will get more and more confusing until all of them sign up for this....

Jon

[AndrewAZ]

Re: Suggestions

I dont see the difference between my vudu box and my DVR.. Well the difference is the vudu box cost $399 and my DVR box costs $5 a month from the cable company.. Has Vudu ever considered both selling the box for people who want to own it and allowing people to rent it for $5 a month under the stipulation that if you dont use it you will get charged the full price? It would be similar to cell phones, the company subsidies the cost of the phone as long as you use their service.. It would be a quick way to gain a large market share, whos going to turn down this product for $5 a month...

[NA9D]

Re: Suggestions

I dont see the difference between my vudu box and my DVR.. Well the difference is the vudu box cost $399 and my DVR box costs $5 a month from the cable company.. Has Vudu ever considered both selling the box for people who want to own it and allowing people to rent it for $5 a month under the stipulation that if you dont use it you will get charged the full price? It would be similar to cell phones, the company subsidies the cost of the phone as long as you use their service.. It would be a quick way to gain a large market share, whos going to turn down this product for $5 a month...

It's tough to do that. What is defined as "not using the box"?? So if I get busy and don't use it for 3 or 4 months I get charged $400? Why shouldn't Best Buy allow me to have a BlueRay player for $5.00 a month under the same terms?

Your cable company can do this because they first of all provide additional services to you that you are paying $60 or $80 a month for. So charging you an extra $5.00 to $10.00 a month for a lousy DVR is not a very large cost investment for them. Plus they have more capital. Additionally, they retain ownership of the box. As soon as you stop using their other services, they take your box back or they bill you for it if you don't. Vudu has no monthly subscription fee and so having to let users have a box for $5.00 is not economically feasible. It would be a logistical headache as well. What happens if in six months someone wants to stop using the service but has trashed the box? Vudu can't really "sell" that box to someone else. Nearly every cable box I have had looks like crap but they can do that because the cable box is a necessary part of delivering the cable service so I as a consumer don't have a choice.


It's really gotten to be a sad state in our society when everyone wants everything subsidized form cell phones to video to health care. I'm not directing that personally at you, but just stating a fact.

I'm pleased that Vudu isn't resorting to a subscription model. I already pay enough for such things as my 3 ReplayTV subscriptions (I should have gone lifetime with them), my cable subscription, 2 cell phones, internet, VoIP, XM Radio, etc...

I DO foresee the day when Vudu licenses its technology to something like a cable company who will then offer the Vudu service on their "rented" device...That's more of the model that will make what you want happen...

[RonV]

Re: Suggestions

One of the goals of VUDU was to eliminate monthly changes and only charge for what you rented/purchased. I know a lot of folks have become accustomed to the razor blade, printer, and cell phone pricing structure. Where you practically give away the hardware and make it up in monthly fees or the supplies.

I don't think that a lease of 5 dollars a month would make the cost of the box...399 divided by $5 would take 6.67 years to cover the cost of the hardware.

Also if the rental prices were increased to shorten the years to break even using the 5 dollar monthly fee, VUDU would be non-competitive to the PPV's of the satellite and cable companies.

With all that said I am sure VUDU is looking at alternative ways to try to reduce the box cost but keep the rental competitive...we are just not privy to what they are doing.

[redwein]

Re: Suggestions

I dont see the difference between my vudu box and my DVR.. Well the difference is the vudu box cost $399 and my DVR box costs $5 a month from the cable company.

The DVR and Vudu do 2 completely different things so it's a strange comparison. A better comparison would be your cable company supplied DVR to a Tivo that costs more (up to $599). Even with that price disparity, there are many who believe the Tivo is worth the price, even though it does the "same" things as the box from the cable company.

[AndrewAZ]

Re: Suggestions

It's tough to do that. What is defined as "not using the box"?? So if I get busy and don't use it for 3 or 4 months I get charged $400? Why shouldn't Best Buy allow me to have a BlueRay player for $5.00 a month under the same terms?

Your cable company can do this because they first of all provide additional services to you that you are paying $60 or $80 a month for. So charging you an extra $5.00 to $10.00 a month for a lousy DVR is not a very large cost investment for them. Plus they have more capital. Additionally, they retain ownership of the box. As soon as you stop using their other services, they take your box back or they bill you for it if you don't. Vudu has no monthly subscription fee and so having to let users have a box for $5.00 is not economically feasible. It would be a logistical headache as well. What happens if in six months someone wants to stop using the service but has trashed the box? Vudu can't really "sell" that box to someone else. Nearly every cable box I have had looks like crap but they can do that because the cable box is a necessary part of delivering the cable service so I as a consumer don't have a choice.


It's really gotten to be a sad state in our society when everyone wants everything subsidized form cell phones to video to health care. I'm not directing that personally at you, but just stating a fact.

I'm pleased that Vudu isn't resorting to a subscription model. I already pay enough for such things as my 3 ReplayTV subscriptions (I should have gone lifetime with them), my cable subscription, 2 cell phones, internet, VoIP, XM Radio, etc...

I DO foresee the day when Vudu licenses its technology to something like a cable company who will then offer the Vudu service on their "rented" device...That's more of the model that will make what you want happen...

You make some very good points.. But like I have said everyone I have showed the box to says its not worth $399... But then again they dont think about how much they pay a month for cable like you said and that adds up. I think its $100 a month for cable/internet/phone bundle plus $5 for each DVR then add the HD channels and the bill is near $130-$140 a month...

I have no doubt that the vudu box will drop in price as it gets cheaper to make, I know the same deal happened with slingbox and I was an early adopter for that, then helping beta test the software before it finally got better and better for mac. But so far I think vudu is ahead of slingbox but then again its simpler since they dont have to program for several OSes.

[AndrewAZ]

Re: Suggestions

The DVR and Vudu do 2 completely different things so it's a strange comparison. A better comparison would be your cable company supplied DVR to a Tivo that costs more (up to $599). Even with that price disparity, there are many who believe the Tivo is worth the price, even though it does the "same" things as the box from the cable company.

Not really.. Hardware wise they are both mini computers with HD's. My DVR has an 80 gig HD, the Vudu has a 100 gig. Both receive a signal and record it to a HD and play it. I just hope the Vudu HD doesnt fail as my times as my DVR has. (I have to get a new DVR every 4-6 months)

[Nded]

Re: Suggestions

Not really.. Hardware wise they are both mini computers with HD's. My DVR has an 80 gig HD, the Vudu has a 100 gig. Both receive a signal and record it to a HD and play it. I just hope the Vudu HD doesnt fail as my times as my DVR has. (I have to get a new DVR every 4-6 months)

Holy cow Andrew, that is a terrible track record. What type of DVR (make/model) are you suffering through?

[NA9D]

Re: Suggestions

Not really.. Hardware wise they are both mini computers with HD's. My DVR has an 80 gig HD, the Vudu has a 100 gig. Both receive a signal and record it to a HD and play it. I just hope the Vudu HD doesnt fail as my times as my DVR has. (I have to get a new DVR every 4-6 months)

Uh, the Vudu has a 250 Gig hard drive.

The Vudu doesn't record anything. How do you think the Vudu receives a signal?

And your DVR fails every 4 to 6 months? Wow, I have a Replay Showstopper that hasn't failed in about 6 years. I have 3 other Replays 5000 series that haven't failed in over 3 years.