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New Bourne released in streaming HD day-and-date with DVD

By Tim Conneally, BetaNews

December 11, 2007, 11:17 AM

IPTV service Vudu has announced that The Bourne Ultimatum will be available as a 1080i high-def download today -- the same day as it is released on DVD.

Many studios currently providing content to Vudu also offer support for sites like Movielink, CinemaNow and even Xbox Live HD downloads. But today's announcement marks the first instance of a studio simultaneously releasing a DVD and an HD download.

Santa Clara-based Vudu has many major studios already offering content for download through its broadband-connected set top boxes: Lionsgate, New Line Cinema, Paramount, Sony, 20th Century Fox, Walt Disney Studios, Warner Brothers, and Universal Studios. Universal, which has been offering The Bourne Identity and The Bourne Supremacy as free HD downloads to new subscribers since October, is the first studio to make downloadable content available the same day as DVDs.

While the majority of Vudu's 5,000 other movies available for download and rental are standard definition, more are anticipated for streaming in HD. Being able to offer a high definition version of a new movie that is not on "format war media" could be very advantageous to participating studios.

Vudu works with P2P technology similar to BitTorrent. When a user purchases or rents a film from the service, the beginning of the movie is streamed directly from Vudu's servers while the rest is downloaded in the background. Streams are MPEG-4 and converted to HD, so only a 1.2 Mbps connection is required for viewing. Faster connections result in no delay.

Primetime network TV content has also been reported to be in beta as of today on Vudu. The first dozen shows include popular programs Arrested Development, Familly Guy, My Name is Earl, and Prison Break.

A Vudu setup can be purchased --in the US only-- directly on vudu.com and amazon.com for $399 USD. It comes with "unlimited" storage for rental films, and room for 100 hours of purchased content, supports resolutions from 480i up to 1080p/24, has Dolby 5.1 sound, and has HDMI, component, S-Video and composite video outs. New accounts activated before the last day of the year also receive $50 in movie credits.

Add a Comment (6 Comments)

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By Cjohn17

edited Dec 16, 2007 - 8:55 AM

Not rent, Bourne is purchase only. If you want to rent anything on VUDU, good luck. There isn't much.

But there is "Vampire Dentist". A "film" shot in someone's garage. VUDU has lots of that kind of "quality" fare.

LOL.

http://theillustratedcon...collected-thoughts.html

Score: 0

By fewt

edited Dec 11, 2007 - 6:09 PM

Netflix says it'll be in my mailbox today on HDDVD. :-D

Edit: Netflix was on the money. :-D

Score: 0

By Metfanant

posted Dec 11, 2007 - 2:39 PM

the problem with anything done through any form of Television is the end quality....the video and audio have to be compressed SO much in order to not KILL bandwidth that the quality suffers greatly....you will likely never see ANYTHING offered by any sort of cable/satellite/iptv service that is even in the same LEAGUE as Blu-ray or HD-DVD...just the way it works...

Score: 0

By Hocuspokus

edited Dec 11, 2007 - 2:16 PM

My Sky HD satellite TV box has something similar, they call it 'Anytime' and partition off half the HDD so as to stream movies and TV content.

It's not actually video on demand but something kind of close (movies and shows are recorded to the HDD and stay on for a week or so and you can watch them or not - if you do watch them I think they get replaced shortly after).

Frankly, I'm sorry to say, it'a a bit of a pain in the a$$ IMO.

If you leave the feature on it makes the Sky box noisey (as it's operating and recording & often has it's fan going a lot more than usual) and if you choose not to use it and switch it off you don't get back the 50% of the HDD which they partition off for it
(which would be far more useful to me to use as I see fit).

Sadly too if this is anything like the HD TV stuff we get in the UK it'll usually be disappointing.
Low bitrates are not uncommon as are the occasion audio drop-outs - and movies are not even always guaranteed to always be in Dolby Digital - nevermind one of the more advanced audio formats which is just not happening until God knows when.

I guess it's all a start and I'd rather have my HD TV box than not but I'd say it's not exactly impressive right now.

Score: 0

By JoshDev

posted Dec 11, 2007 - 12:08 PM

I just don't see the upside to this. Spend $399 dollars for a system that requires me to pay a monthly fee for internet and pay nearly the same price of a bluray disk for 1080i HD movie content. If this was software that could run on any computer that would be one thing.

It's a nice step in the right direction, but for now I say just pick up a 40GB PS3 for the same price and more functionality.

Score: 0

By MikeTechno

posted Dec 11, 2007 - 11:51 AM

Streaming media is fine as an occasional way to watch a film but it will never replace content on discs. You will always want content on discs so that you can watch a movie without having to turn your PC on, so you can watch it on a portable DVD player and so you can watch it in your in-dash, disc based DVD player in your car.

Didn't one of the major streaming movie distribution companies just shut down and go out of business this week? I forget which one it was but they had been backed by multiple millions of dollars of investment capital and they still failed.

It is going to be a VERY long time before you see streaming anything replace disc based media. Disc based media is simple, innexpensive, perfectly portable and doesn't require a connection to the web. Hard to beat that with streaming anything for most people.

Score: 0

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