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Fandango at Home Forum Guidelines

The Fandango at Home Forums are designed to help viewers get the most out of their Fandango at Home experience. Here, Fandango at Home customers may post information, questions, ideas, etc. on the subject of Fandango at Home and Fandango at Home -related issues (home theater, entertainment, etc). Although the primary purpose of these forums is to help Fandango at Home customers with questions and/or problems with their Fandango at Home service, there are also off-topic areas available within the Fandango at Home Forums for users to chat with like-minded people, subject to the limitations below.

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How many stored Movies

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    #1

    How many stored Movies

    Hello All,

    How many Movies in standard and HD format will Vudu allow to be stored ?? .. i.e. how many can one purchase and store on the unit.

    BRW
    Tags: None
    #2
    Re: How many stored Movies

    You should be able to store somewhere between 50 and 75 movies.

    Comment

      #3
      Re: How many stored Movies

      Originally posted by brwatters View Post
      Hello All,

      How many Movies in standard and HD format will Vudu allow to be stored ?? .. i.e. how many can one purchase and store on the unit.

      BRW
      They say you can permanently store approximately 100 hours of SD movies, which is about 50 movies total. Beyond that, I believe they are planning on supporting an external USB drive for additional storage but they don't support it yet.

      Comment

        #4
        Re: How many stored Movies

        How many HD movies would you guess? Do they take up 2x, 4x the space of SD movies? Don't know why I'm asking -- not sure if I like any movie enough to watch it enough times to buy, I can see renting a few times ...

        Comment

          #5
          Re: How many stored Movies

          I think they say it is about 2x.

          Comment

            #6
            Re: How many stored Movies

            SD movies are around 1.5 to 2 GB as I understand it and HD is around 3.5 to 4 GB.

            Those may not be exact numbers but HD is approximately 2x the storage space. The exact sizes are going to vary with movie content.

            Comment

              #7
              Re: How many stored Movies

              Thx. Can't see me filling up the drive ... if it takes 20-25 movies.

              Comment

                #8
                Re: How many stored Movies

                I don't think you'll fill up the drive with movies - at least in the short term. Long term - maybe but like you and others, at a couple dollars to rent, most of the time, I'd just rather rent them whenever I want to see it. Even at $5.00 a rental, it would still take me around 4 times of seeing the movie to make purchase worthwhile.

                I see myself purchasing more movies for my kids than myself (but I WILL purchase the Bourne Ultimatum just to complete the trilogy). In fact, I wish one in particular, Piglets Big Movie, was available for purchase. I've rented it like 3 or 4 times already as my kids love it!

                Comment

                  #9
                  Defragging the VUDU Box

                  With movies coming and going off the hard drive, what does VUDU plan to do to defrag the VUDU box? It could become an issue, perhaps even a severe issue after significant or long term use. Anyone with a moderate understanding computer knowledge understands this issue.

                  It is after all, a hard drive. What periodic "care and feeding" are required by the owner and/or VUDU?

                  Comment

                    #10
                    Re: Defragging the VUDU Box

                    Originally posted by Cjohn17 View Post
                    With movies coming and going off the hard drive, what does VUDU plan to do to defrag the VUDU box? It could become an issue, perhaps even a severe issue after significant or long term use. Anyone with a moderate understanding computer knowledge understands this issue.

                    It is after all, a hard drive. What periodic "care and feeding" are required by the owner and/or VUDU?
                    It's a very good question. I'm not sure what Vudu wants or doesn't want to reveal about their drive structure. It's possible they have multiple partitions where you might have one for software, one for rentals and one for purchases. Then purchases could all be written sequentially.

                    The box could also have its own defrag routines, etc. What care and feeding does your DVR have? Do you have a TiVo or a Replay or similar? You have an even more severe issue with these sorts of boxes as they are always recording or buffering data, recording shows, deleting shows, etc.

                    So I wouldn't let the fact that there's a hard drive be an issue, particularly as I've never heard of defrag issues having a problem on DVRs - I've done a lot of community support for the ReplayTV community and it's never been an issue.

                    So to answer your question: No care and feeding by the user is necessary.

                    Comment

                      #11
                      Re: Defragging the VUDU Box

                      Originally posted by Cjohn17 View Post
                      With movies coming and going off the hard drive, what does VUDU plan to do to defrag the VUDU box? It could become an issue, perhaps even a severe issue after significant or long term use. Anyone with a moderate understanding computer knowledge understands this issue.

                      It is after all, a hard drive. What periodic "care and feeding" are required by the owner and/or VUDU?
                      Umm... actually, anyone with more than just basic computer knowledge understands that filesystem fragmentation is only an issue with poorly written filesystems. Here's a rudimentary explanation of why file fragmentation isn't an issue with most Linux filesystems:

                      http://www.whylinuxisbetter.net/item...ment/index.php

                      While I don't know what the engineering team is using for a filesystem (or an OS), I would be willing to bet it's not a FAT variant and isn't subject to poor file handling. There are other things that can happen to a disk, but file fragmentation should be a non issue so you shouldn't have to worry about a performance hit due to file fragment seeking.

                      Comment

                        #12
                        Re: How many stored Movies

                        Plus, the rate that data needs to be read from the disk for movie playback is waaaaaaay less than the disk is capable of, even if it was very fragmented. This is not the same situation you have in a computer where programs try to run as fast as possible. There would be no benefit to reading a movie 10 times faster than you can show it.

                        Comment

                          #13
                          What's Inside?

                          I've been with DirecTV and TiVo many years and their equipment has always been reliable. That is not to say that there hasn't been problems throughout the community with some drives failing. Drives do fail. And yes, DirecTV does maintain their equipment through regular updates and clean up routines.

                          However, VUDU does not yet inspire that level confidence or have a long track record of success. I am confident in the parts that are in my DirecTV HD Plus DVR including the new Intel Inside chipset. I am also very confident in my maintenance/replacement agreement with DirecTV for $5 a month. I am also confident in DirecTV's high level of customer satisfaction and the J.D. Power and Associates award they win on a yearly basis.

                          I am also confident I can go to a Best Buy, if need be, and buy a new SD DirecTV DVR for $99 or a new HD Plus DVR for about $199, should they fail. A lot cheaper than a VUDU box. I can also buy an external hard drive for about $200 to beef up my storage capability well beyond even VUDUs.

                          For customers' peace of mind, will VUDU consider offering a maintenance/replacement agreements? If so, will VUDU grandfather customers who have already purchased the equipment? Will VUDU let us know what equipment mfgs. they have partnered with so we can have a higher level confidence in the product? VUDU's early adopters are a sophisticated bunch, I'm sure they would like to know. I am very curious about what's inside.

                          I think it's important that VUDU be just as forthcoming about the quality of the products inside their box as their competitors have been. They should trumpet the quality vendors they have associated themselves with. Maybe someday VUDU will earn a J.D. Power and Associates award!

                          Comment

                            #14
                            Re: How many stored Movies

                            There are tear down websites showing the contents inside the Vudu. The processor is made by Broadcom, and I believe the drive is by Hitachi or possibly Samsung. The drive interface mechanism is SATA. This is all in the public domain and I'd encourage you to go out and research this info.

                            In the consumer electronics world it is very unusual for companies to trumpet their internal BOMs as there are contractural and also competitive issues as well. I sell electronic components to major telecommunications and medical companies. I'd really rather not have them publicize my components as I have competitive issues with other customers that I also sell components to. So it's not unusual that a company doesn't announce their internal product lists.

                            Hard drives don't fail because of fragmentation. They fail because they are mechanical devices and all mechanical devices eventually have a breakdown.

                            Vudu has stated that their products have a 1 year warranty. That is pretty typical of the electronics industry. If you purchase with a credit card, many cards double the manufacturer's warranty. Additionally, if you purchase a box at a retailer like Tweeter, I am sure you can purchase an extended warranty.

                            Vudu guarantees the content on your drive. If your drive fails, they will replace the drive with the same content. You've been critical of this or questioned it in other posts and I'm not really sure why this is an issue for you. You seem to not believe in it.

                            Comment

                              #15
                              Re: How many stored Movies

                              Here's a link to the tear down article.

                              And maybe this will help (taken from that article):

                              Taking a peek inside the Vudu reveals a few more technical aspects of the hardware. The larger IC used is the Broadcom BCM7401, which handles everything from HD decoding to video upscaling. This is the same chip used in the TiVo HD.
                              And:

                              For storage Vudu chose to go with the Hitachi CinemaStar series of hard drives. With quiet acoustics and low power requirements, CinemaStar drives are made for DVR and other such set-top box applications. A 7200RPM 250GB Serial-ATA CinemaStar model is used in the Vudu.
                              Same chip used in the TiVo HD. You stated you had faith in TiVo. Please have faith in Vudu.

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