Showdown: Apple TV vs. VUDU

Post by **Shane** » Mon Apr 14, 2008 11:13 am

mjm7496 wrote:I see that the Apple TV now has 200 movies in HD.

I was looking for numbers from Apple over the weekend for another article I'm about to publish. Can you please let me know where you found the "200" number? The last official number I have from Apple is from a February press release where they indicated they'd have over 100 by the end of February. I did a physical count about that time and there were only about 70.

mjm7496 wrote:I'm guessing Vudo has expanded to the same number, but on their webpage I only see 72. How have they been about adding HD content daily/weekly? The Apple TV seems a bit slow from DVD release to publishing it on iTunes, but they do seem to add something new just about every day. Some have been under 30 days even though that was what the stated delay was supposed to be. I wonder how Vudu has gotten around this or are you seeing close to a 30 day lag on most releases now too?

I'm not sure how in-sync their web page is to their content. I know they had 72 at the end of January and seem to be adding another 2-3 each week since. Both services suffer from the "release window". Hollywood still sees digital distribution "poaching" their DVD rentals/sales ... so there have only been a few "day-and-date" releases digitally with DVD. I've not seen any from Apple, but Vudu had one or two.

mjm7496 wrote:For all those people out there that want to point out that I'm probably just some Apple fanboy I wanted to add that the reason I know a LITTLE bit about the Vudu is that I was doing a little research about it because I was just thinking about buying one. While I do love the Apple TV I am always looking for something else to play around with. I was thinking about moving the Apple TV to another room and buying another device to replace it with some added functionality/quality for my 50" Kuro. I have tried an XBOX360 and found it to be lacking in every area except their movie rentals. I also did some research on the PS3 and being it lacks a movie rental service and has a dreadful interface for this type of use it doesn't fit the need.

You will get a lot from the article coming out later this week/next. It is a comparison of video download services ... more later ;-)

mjm7496 wrote:I really wish that Vudu would add the ability to stream my own media! I could live without some of the niceties that the Apple TV has, but I need the ability to play my own stuff as well as rent movies. Do you think that this is something that Vudu could/would consider offering in the future to stay competitive with the current and future set top boxes?

Definitely! There has been no official announcement from Vudu, of course ... but they do "listen intently to customer requests."

That's another thing I like about Vudu: They've committed to (and so far lived up to) software releases on a regular (every 6 weeks) basis. They're always bringing new features and functions to the box. I would not be surprised to see support for media streaming and possibly even DVD burning added by the end of the year.

- Shane

mjm7496 · Post by **mjm7496** » Mon Apr 14, 2008 11:24 am

Shane wrote:I was looking for numbers from Apple over the weekend for another article I'm about to publish. Can you please let me know where you found the "200" number? The last official number I have from Apple is from a February press release where they indicated they'd have over 100 by the end of February. I did a physical count about that time and there were only about 70.

There is a site called, "Apple TV Junkie", that does a fantastic job of keeping track of the library both SD and HD. You can check it out at http://www.appletvjunkie.com/

They have created a database that enables searching by name, genre, rating, CC, Dolby Digital, and of course HD/SD.

I also wanted to add... When I rent either HD or SD from Apple TV mine is ready to play in under 1 minute and never re-buffers during the movie. Did yours really take 15 minutes to play? My internet connection speed is about 2 Mbs.

Post by **Shane** » Thu Apr 17, 2008 8:49 am

mjm7496 wrote:There is a site called, "Apple TV Junkie", that does a fantastic job of keeping track of the library both SD and HD. You can check it out at http://www.appletvjunkie.com/

I contacted Edward at Apple TV Junkie and he was kind enough to let me reference his site in an upcoming article. Thank you for the link!

mjm7496 wrote:I also wanted to add... When I rent either HD or SD from Apple TV mine is ready to play in under 1 minute and never re-buffers during the movie. Did yours really take 15 minutes to play? My internet connection speed is about 2 Mbs.

SD content I was able to watch within 1 minute of downloading ... I think it was Shooter. But yes, the HD flim I tried to watch (Transformers I think) took 15 minutes before I could start playing it. My internet connection speed is 6Mbps advertised (5 actual).

There are a lot of factors that could play into this: popularity of movie, time of day downloading, network congestion, etc. I must admit that I did not try to purchase a lot of movies, so it is possible that your results may vary. But this does prove my point that a distributed (Peer to Peer) network is better at handling the anomalies I listed above.

Let's assume this (internet rentals) really takes off. Can the client/server infrastructure utilized by Apple (and others) support millions of downloads of new releases every Tuesday? Under that scenario, a P2P infrastructure sure seems more appealing.

- Shane