A couple of weeks back I sang the praises of a company and product called Vudu. Last week my Vudu box arrived. A week later here are my initial thoughts.
Setup and unpacking: A-
Vudu is packaged neatly and will be up and running in less than 20 minutes for the majority of the population. I had to purchase a Wireless bridge adaptor which took an extra 20 minutes of configuration for me as I am a rookie in dealing with Wireless gaming bridges. The wireless bridge purchase also will allow me to play PS3 online, something that I have not found the time to do in the almost full year of ownership of the device. All in all I found setup to be fairly simple and manageable.
User Interface: A+
It’s almost fun just to play Vudu in search of the perfect movie that has eluded you all these years. Easy to navigate with multiple ways of searching and sorting through movies. Interface is clean, sharp, and bursting with movie posters. Being able to watch a lot of the trailers is a huge plus too.
Remote: A
The remote is awesome. The remote to the fan in my room is actually bigger and has more buttons than the Vudu remote. I have actually freaked out twice thinking I lost the remote because its so small.
Movie Selection: C-
I will revisit this as the months go on as I know the movie studios are doing a lot of experimenting around Vudu. General rule of thumb is that VUDU has about 1/2 the movies you can think of. However of the ones they do have some are only able to be purchased or only rented but not both. It was disappointing to see that they didn’t have a lot of Coen brothers movies and only had Knocked Up out of Judd Appatow’s impressive recent string of hits. I am under the impression that Vudu will be introducing more and more titles and would go bonkers if television shows became available on Vudu. For now this is the biggest issue.
Technology: A-
Everything works. You pick movies, they play. Its pretty sweet.
What have I watched on Vudu?
Thus far I have purchased Knocked up and Who Killed the Electric car, which has the trailer below. Although I do not consider myself an environmentalist by any stretch of the imagination, I found the documentary about the demise of electric cars to be very compelling. Definitely recommended. The documentary’s title is pretty self explanatory and featured lot of different perspective and insight on how and why the electric car went from a very promising technology to a thing of the past.
I found it very troubling that electric cars (which were somewhat prevalent in California in the nineties) were essentially wiped off the market in order to make way for the introduction of Hydrogen fueled cars. While this may sound reasonable, most experts believe that Hydrogen cars are more than a full decade away from being a viable consumer option.
Electric cars were enjoyed and adored by Californian owners for years only to be repossessed by various automakers in an effort to focus all alternative energy car efforts to mainly Hydrogen. With multiple hurdles in front of hydrogen fueled cars, the question of Who Killed the Electric Car is one that should rightfully be asked and investigated.
