Vudu unveils near Blu-ray-quality Net video

The Apple TV competitor calls it HDX video, and indeed, it's the best looking over-the-Net video I've seen yet, rivaling even Blu-ray. And get this: It costs the same as Vudu's "standard" HD rentals. The catch? No instant viewing.

About 65 of Vudu's 300-odd HD titles will be available in the 1080p HDX format starting Thursday, including "Speed Racer," "Close Encounters of the Third Kind," "The Spiderwick Chronicles," "Chinatown," "Pitch Black," "The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift," and "The Chronicles of Riddick." Also, Vudu says that all upcoming HD titles will come with HDX versions, and that existing Vudu HD titles will eventually get the HDX treatment as well. Both HD and HDX new releases go for $5.99—a buck more than they do on Apple TV—while catalog HD and HDX titles will rent for $3.99.

Of course, Vudu has had scores of "HD" rentals for months now, but as with Apple TV, the video quality of these "standard" HD titles is pretty murky—somewhere between standard-def DVD and Blu-ray quality. Images look soft, backgrounds muddy, faces blotchy, and lighting effects (like, say, a sunset) suffer from visible bands of false contouring. Then again, you can start watching instantly once you click the "Rent" button.

I was expecting more of the same from Vudu's new HDX standard; instead, I've been delighted with what I've seen.

Pulling my chair up within a few feet of my 46-inch, 1080p Sony Bravia LCD TV, I dialed up "The Chronicles of Riddick" and was immediately impressed. The picture looked razor-sharp, right down to the structure of the film grain. I didn't spot any blockiness or obvious background artifacts, faces looked perfect (right down to the pores in Thandie Newton's skin), and false contouring was greatly reduced (although it's still visible if you look hard enough). Overall, I'd say HDX looks perhaps a shade or two softer than Blu-ray video over my PlayStation 3—but we're starting to split hairs here.

Vudu gave me a 10-page white paper on the specifics of HDX; I'll spare you the details, but suffice to say that we're talking a true, 1080p image at 24 frames per second, using H.264 encoding. Bitrates peak up to about 20Mbps (compared to 25-35Mbps for Blu-ray, or 5-10Mbps for standard DVD), while audio gets a bump as well: up to 640Kbps for Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtracks, same as Blu-ray. (Note: Just to clarify, I'm talking about standard DD 5.1 soundtracks here, which go up to 640Kbps on Blu-ray discs, but peak at just 448Kbps on DVD; after that, you've got "enhanced" formats like Dolby Digital Plus/DTS-HD High Resolution or lossless formats like Dolby Digital TrueHD/DTS-HD Master Audio, all of which blow away anything that HDX has to offer.)

The catch, of course, is that you won't be able to start watching HDX titles right away. At home over Road Runner broadband, it took a good three to four hours for an HDX feature to be "ready to play" on my loaner Vudu box, compared to a minute or less with typical HD videos over Apple TV or Vudu.

The Vudu box itself is still pretty pricey—$299, to be exact (compared to $229 for the 40GB Apple TV, although cheaper than the $329 160GB Apple box). That said, Best Buy has just announced that it'll give anyone buying a Vudu box a $200 movie credit—not bad.

So, would HDX make you video junkies out there more likely to snap up a Vudu (or an Apple TV, were Apple to unveil something similar)? Or are the hardware and rental prices still a turn-off?