My Preamble to Comparing Vudu, Netflix Live and AppleTV

Almost a year ago Apple released an update for AppleTV that allowed users to rent movies from home. I was quite excited about this along with the other developments that were occurring already in the area of streaming movies for viewing at home. I recall not renting a movie from Blockbuster until late May because I was so smitten with AppleTV at the time and very proud of their continued boldness in convincing audio and now the movie makers to change their licensing arrangements to allow streaming.

But a lot has changed in that this last year. I’ve always been a bit of audiophile and serious home theater hobbyist. I’m going to give you the set up I have for testing (and of course my viewing pleasure) and pass along what I’m seeing and experiencing with these three companies offering streaming movies. I purchased all the gear myself, I have no affiliation with any of them, and I’m not a paid reviewer (not opposed to that but for these articles, I’m just telling you what’s important to me to express). So my bias will be of course ‘ my bias’ meaning the way I tend to look at things as a geek and avid movie watcher.

I have two rooms. One is your typical living room with a couch and a 40″ Toshiba LCD TV that support 1080i (not P). I have the TivoHD in there which was recently upgraded automatically on December to provide Netflix Streamings. You gotta love devices that update over the Internet with such ease. I have an AppleTV box in there too which I hope to load BOXEE on after I’m done with these reviews.

I have taken each box over to my girlfriend’s home to see how well they perform there. For example the AppleTV has (late 2008 early 2009) terrible delays in downloading movies and even movie trailers, even with a 6MB/sec download speed. There is just nothing like trying to watch a movie on Friday night only to have it stutter and stop and take hours to finish the download. This has happened repeatedly in multiple locations in Austin. That’s the kind of thing you just do not want to have go wrong with services like streaming movies.

The theater room is a converted formal dining room. On one end is a 92″ screen with black curtains all around. I’m using a Sony VPL-VW50 which is a full 1080p LCD projector and is extremely quiet. This room has Yamaha Receciver RX-V2600 with Sony Bluray DVD, Netflix Roku box, AppleTV and the Vudu box all hooked up via HDMI. I’m using a 5.1 Paradigm speaker set up in the theater room.

I’m saving the Vudu box for last because I’ve had it the least amount of time. Once you start playing around with the different boxes you see where they shine and where they fall short of my expectations (or my personal wishes).  It’s important to remember that 3 months from now some of the points in this review could change.

My biggest complaint with all three services is the lack of special features that are almost always on a DVD. I miss getting to know more about the director and the actors or the sreenwriter(s). Often films have a rich history around the creation of the story and the filming process. I guess I’m in the minority on this as I don’t hear others complaining. I’m also wishing/hoping someday the licensing Gods of the movie theaters will let us download first run movies right to our own home theater. I’m willing to pay a premium to see them that way because, let’s face it, we’re already paying a premium to see it at the theater. But of course, it’s all more complicated then I suspect the public really knows. All we can do is keep up the banter about wanting more and sooner or later, we’ll get it (I hope).

Feel free to chime in here on these issues and more as I roll out the various reviews.

Next up, AppleTV.

Tom

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 3rd, 2009 at 1:31 pm and is filed under Product Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.