Vudu makes HD titles downloadable

Highddefinition video-on-demand service Vudu has been making an honest play at becoming the set top box that brings streaming video to the home theater enthusiast market. Today, the company has begun to offer HD movies as downloads in addition to streams.

Vudu's library of high-definiton titles is around 1,400 and downloads will cost between $13.99 and $23.99. Vudu set top boxes are all equipped with HDDs, which could conceivably fill up quickly when downloading HD movies. For example, the company's top-of-the-line STB, the XL, can hold approximately 500 standard definition titles on its terabyte drive. Vudu however, reinforces the user's account with a free cloud storage service called Vudu Vault. Archival in the Vudu Vault is currently limited to select movies, but all television content can be stored there.

While Vudu must contend with Netflix's near ubiquitous streaming service, it is far ahead in terms of volume of high-definition content. Netflix only debuted its high-definition streaming service three months ago, and has roughly one fourth of the HD content of Vudu. Further, Netflix HD is still is only comparable to DVD quality when streaming 8 Mbps, and its shortcomings are especially visible on larger high-definition screens.

Vudu's other major competition comes from Apple TV, which has a library of HD content that's been growing for just over a year. However, Apple's offering is limited in that HD movies are available as rentals, but only television episodes in high-definition can be downloaded.