Poor VUDU
(Full disclosure: I wasn’t selected as a beta tester for the VUDU box, but the company did reward my early interest in the form of a $99 box and $99 worth of free movies. Not bad, huh?)
I first read about VUDU last spring when the company’s first product — a supposed movie store in-a-box — was exclusively unveiled in a big New York Times Sunday spread. Netflix in your house was what they promised. These guys worked for TiVo! Awesome new peer-to-peer network! Movies to rent and own! Social features to connect with friends! And hey, don’t forget about that freaky looking remote. I was very intrigued.
Fast forward to about 6 weeks ago when my little VUDU box arrived at the office. I told my co-workers all about it and how it did this and that, but they were frankly more interested in a coffee run than some $400 box that only played movies. Maybe that was a bad omen.
No Trainspotting. No American Beauty. Why are they presenting some movies in a To Own-only option? The only thing I want to do is rent. I was completely frustrated by the handcuffs and limited selection. Now, people who follow technology know that the movie studios obviously forced a lot of these limitations on VUDU. But I was looking at this new product through the eyes of Joe Mainstream, and I didn’t like what I saw at first.
A few nights later, I picked up the form-fitting remote control again and a weird thing happened. I noticed that I had wasted about 10-15 minutes browsing the VUDU selection and building a Watch List of about 20-30 movies that I would want to eventually see. Catalog size didn’t matter to me at this point. I was growing attached to this thing, in much the same way we all fell in love with their TiVo. Maybe this has a chance, if only they could get the cost down.
Then the company came out with a bizarre announcement at CES. Instead of a cheaper box, they introduced a $999 model (10x what I paid for my box) that features 1TB of disk space. Did VUDU hear from customers that they wanted a larger drive to store purchased movies? To me, the announcement seemed so off that I wondered if they even spoke with one customer. As an owner and movie fan, I want to rent. And apparently I’m not alone.
Two weeks ago, prior to introducing the revised AppleTV software, Steve Jobs said that customers have continuously told Apple they want to rent, not buy, movies. Can you imagine being the VUDU team watching this announcement and the unveiling of the iTunes Movie Rental store? Gulp.
In one fell swoop, Apple essentially added the VUDU service to iTunes and lowerd the price of the AppleTV down to $229, nearly one-half of what the VUDU box cost (and it does considerably more). Granted, many of the same licensing restrictions will dog the iTunes offerings for some time, but VUDU has to go up against the industry’s hottest company, a cheaper device and an advertising budget 100x theirs.
To have any chance, they need to cast a spell and have a $149 product suddenly appear. Good luck.
Update: VUDU announced earlier today they will be slashing the price of their box to $295. For those owners who purchased the product in the last 30 days, the company is offering $100 worth of movies.