Hands-on Review: Vudu Set-Top Box

Five thousand movies on your TV, instantly: that's the promise of Vudu, a TV set-top box that uses the power of peer-to-peer networking to deliver near-DVD quality videos to your living room at the click of a button, no PC required. I've had about a week to test-drive the Vudu; did it fulfill my dreams of home-theater nirvana? Read on.

First announced back in April, the Vudu ($400) is a relatively unobtrusive, four-pound box containing a 250GB hard drive (enough for 100 hours of standard-def movies; a pair of USB ports will soon allow for additional storage) and an Ethernet port (a broadband Net connection is required). While most Net-connected set-top boxes take upwards of 20-plus minutes to download a two-hour standard-def movie, the Vudu starts playing immediately. How? The box comes pre-loaded with the first 30 seconds of the most popular movies (the snippets download in the background onto unused portions of the hard drive), and thanks to peer-to-peer networking (think Napster 1.0—minus the piracy thing, of course), each working Vudu box shares the load in terms of downloading any given movie.

Setup was pretty straightforward; I just plugged my HDMI and Toslink digital audio connections into the back of the Vudu. Component, S-Video, and composite video hookups are also available, along with analog RCA audio inputs. (Click here for my beginners' guide to video connections.) Next, I plugged in an Ethernet cable connected to my home network, along with a short antenna for the remote. Finally, I powered up the box; after a few short setup screens, the Vudu was up and running.

Before I jump into the Vudu interface and my experience watching movies, let's get some technical specs out of the way. The Vudu is capable of delivering full-on 1080p video to an HDMI-equipped HDTV; for the time-being, however, all Vudu movies are offered in 480p only—in other words, standard definition. (HD movies are reportedly coming to Vudu at some point.) The box can also deliver 5.1 surround sound to your receiver, but not all of Vudu's movies have Dolby Digital soundtracks—and some fairly recent movies actually sounded like they were in mono. More on that in a bit.

Anyway, the actual experience of zooming around the Vudu's menus is pretty fun. Part of the reason for that is the simple Vudu remote: just five buttons (including the power button and a "Vudu" key that brings you back to the main menu) and a clickable jog dial, perfect for surfing around the various screens and scrolling down long lists of movies. The main menu displays a list of 20 "featured" movies, including flicks already stored on the Vudu hard drive and new releases. You also get the option to browse all your purchased/rented movies, view your "wish list," or tweak your video/audio settings.

Vudu claims that once you select or purchase a movie, you can begin watching instantaneously (as long as you have a broadband connection in the 2-3MB range), and it worked just as advertised; movies began the moment I clicked "watch now," and I never ran into any stuttering or buffering problems. I've often had to wait as long as 10 minutes to watch a 45-minute, standard-definition TV show from the Xbox Video Marketplace; not so here. That said, I have a feeling you won't be able to watch instantly when (and if) HD movies—which can take hours to download from the Xbox store—arrive on Vudu.

How's the video quality? Well...pretty good, if somewhat shy of razor-sharp. The picture is slightly softer than DVD quality, although it’s a step above the murky movies and videos on iTunes. I did detect some blocky backgrounds and false contouring, but overall, I thought that video quality was pretty decent.

Sound quality was another matter. Not every movie on Vudu comes with a 5.1 Dolby Digital soundtrack, and while that's to be expected from an older title like "A Clockwork Orange," I was surprised to learn that "300" was stuck with DD 2.0 sound. Even worse, many newer movies, including "Spider-Man," "Spider-Man 2," "Stealth," "2 Fast 2 Furious" ("Show me what you got, brah!"), and "Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer"—big actions epics, all—sounded like they were practically in mono. I asked Vudu reps about this, and they responded that some films in their catalog may have been improperly encoded. Fixes are coming, but there's no telling how long that may take—so if you're a surround-sound fanatic, be warned.

OK then, so what about the movie selection? Vudu has about 5,000 films online (compared to 7,000 on Amazon Unbox, about 4,000 on CinemaNow, and a couple hundred each on iTunes and the Xbox Video Marketplace), and it's signed deals with all the major movie houses—including Paramount, Sony, Fox, Universal, Disney, and Warner Brothers—plus some smaller, notable studios, such as Lions Gate, Kino, First Look, and PBS. (I asked about TV shows, and Vudu reps said to "stay tuned".) Vudu compares its selection to, say, your local video store, rather than the gargantuan collections at Netflix and Blockbuster, and I'd say that's about right. Such recent releases as "Disturbia," "Music and Lyrics," "Ghost Rider," "The Motorcycle DIaries," "Vacancy," "The Last King of Scotland," "300," and "28 Weeks Later" are present and accounted for. No "Star Wars" or "Indiana Jones" flicks are available, but several "Star Trek" movies are online, plus the Jason Bourne movies. Of course, there are plenty of Bollywood and Z-grade horror movies as well, if that happens to be your thing.

Browsing for movies was pretty cool; you can search by actor, director, or keyword, and you can filter search results by MPAA rating, critics' star ratings, genre, and year of release. Also, when you click through to a movie detail page, a list of the actors and filmmakers appears on the left; just click a name to see all their movies available on Vudu.

Movies cost between 99 cents and $3.99 to rent (most of the major titles were about $3 or $4) for a 24-hour period, or $4.99 to $19.99 to buy (again, the big-name titles were usually at least $10). Here's the catch, though: some movies you can only rent, and other you can only buy. For example, the recent Ryan Gosling film "Half Nelson" is a buy-only title at $15, as is "Reservoir Dogs" at $10. That said, most of the major new releases seem to have rental options. Also: I wish there were an "all-you-can-watch" subscription fee, maybe $30 a month for all the movies you can stand (or perhaps, a discounted rate for buying a bundle of rentals at once).

So...is Vudu worth the $400 sticker price? Depends. I find the idea of 5,000 on-demand movies to be pretty enticing, and the selection isn’t bad considering the other online movie options. But while video quality is fine, I'm troubled by the glitchy sound on many Vudu titles; I'd want to check in during the coming weeks and see how many movies have been fixed before breaking out my credit card.