[Rclark]

 Tried this out, there is a $5.99 free movie promotion on PSN. Claim world's largest library. I can say that out of all the movie services I've tried so far, this one's the best.

First of all the free trial is very nice, no credit card asked for, just your email address, and bam pick a movie. No opening your laptop to check your email and follow a link and.... just straight to choose a title. I chose The Grey, cause what the heck, it was free.

 The service did a speed test and gave me the highest rating, HDX. Now compared to another service I've tried, CinemaNow, it blasted this movie at me, loading instantly and in full 1080P right from the beginning, with excellent, dynamic audio. That other service would skip and hickup, then eventually kick me down to 2mps. I consider the quality here to be at or above dvd quality, and loads faster than anything I've seen.

 The audio, at least in The Grey, was excellent and the dynamic range was quite dramatic.

 This service charges a $1.00 more per movie rental compared to Cinemanow and others (for their top tier download speed), but it's definitely worth the extra buck. They absolutely blasted this movie at me, it was a faster loading experience than even simple Youtube vids and right there at full resolution, full image saturation from the first moment.

 Netflix is great for older stuff, and tv shows, especially if you aren't always critical of fidelity. But VUDU looks like an excellent source of new run and in cinema material, superior to the rest I've tried.

[ajzepp]

Vudu is easily the best streaming service out there, I totally agree. I've been a customer of Netflix for ten years, but about 30% of my rental activity is new releases....so when they took that option away I started looking elsewhere. The 1080p and Dolby + streams are of such high quality that I have cut my Netflix back to only the streaming service now. It costs me more per month to use Vudu than it did to have the bluray rental option with Netflix, but I'm more than willing to pay a premium for the greater selection of new releases and also the added convenience. HDX is for sure the way to go...the image is absolutely amazing and I have yet to have a single "blip" with regard to the stream. And now that Walmart owns them, I'm hoping they will be around for the long run.

Oh, and I thought The Grey was a very solid film....loved it, especially the ending.

[Rob Babcock]

I haven't tried VUDU but another big thumbs-up for The Grey!

[Rclark]

 It was good. Very depressing though!

[mca]

Looks like VUDU is the best way to get new releases without having to rent disks from Netflix. I just checked and my Roku HD does not support it and my older Oppo does not stream. What would be the best device to purchase to try it out?

[Rclark]

 I'm running it on PS3. Go buy a used one at a game store.

[ajzepp]

Looks like VUDU is the best way to get new releases without having to rent disks from Netflix. I just checked and my Roku HD does not support it and my older Oppo does not stream. What would be the best device to purchase to try it out?

If you don't need 1080p video, you can also rent new releases from Amazon. Their quality is quite good, as well, and that is available on the Roku box. I use Amazon almost as much as I do Vudu, although I prefer Vudu. I love my Roku cause I take it with me when I go hang out with a friend...all I do is connect it to her tv and punch in the network key for her wireless router and I'm good to go. Amazon usually has new releases the same day as Vudu, and the streams are very reliable, but Vudu HDX is definitely the best overall in terms of quality.

[youravhandyman]

Gaaaa!  MCA I just sold an actual VUDU player on eBay for $50 brand new. That would have been the best way since it actually has a 1TB hard drive so that you can download movies to it's hard drive and take them with you.  The navigation with it's scroll wheel remote is lightning fast but clunky to type letters with. 
You can probably pick up one of the lesser models on ebay still for around the same price.  Works the same but with less hard drive space and no ability to integrate to home automation systems.
VUDU stopped producing the stand alone players like this several years ago but I just couldn't get rid of this last one.  Hope you can find one out there. 

[Rclark]

Ok, now watching Sin City and I am convinced. Besides the fact that it's in 1080p, this is pretty well past dvd quality. It is just amazing to me that a movie can stream like this and look so good. I have Master and Commander on BluRay, I might just compare the two if I get bored, just to see how close HDX gets.

[ajzepp]

Ok, now watching Sin City and I am convinced. Besides the fact that it's in 1080p, this is pretty well past dvd quality. It is just amazing to me that a movie can stream like this and look so good. I have Master and Commander on BluRay, I might just compare the two if I get bored, just to see how close HDX gets.

It gets very, very close if you have the internet speed to accomodate it. And the good news is that when you have more "headroom", so to speak, the image gets even better. When I upgraded my cable modem to 30megs, the PQ went from really, really good to "nearly indistinguishable from blu". With DSL you can have some buffering issues, but with a cable modem you can truly get an amazingly good image. There's no way I would have bailed on my Netflix bluray rentals if I couldn't get similar PQ, and that's exactly what I have with HDX 

[mca]

I was able to get my Xbox 360 setup to work with VUDU. I had to pay $59.99 for a year of Xbox LIVE gold to get it to work which kind of stinks, but, oh well. Even though my interned speed tested at 5.5 Mbps, I am only getting movies in HD, not HDX.

I watched the Ghost Rider trailer and it looked pretty good, but I would like to take advantage of HDX if my internet connection will actually support it. 

[ajzepp]

I was able to get my Xbox 360 setup to work with VUDU. I had to pay $59.99 for a year of Xbox LIVE gold to get it to work which kind of stinks, but, oh well. Even though my interned speed tested at 5.5 Mbps, I am only getting movies in HD, not HDX.

I watched the Ghost Rider trailer and it looked pretty good, but I would like to take advantage of HDX if my internet connection will actually support it.

Yeah, you'll want to average closer to 9mbps in order to have a nice HDX image...although the HD image is still quite good and it's slightly less expensive.

[Rclark]

I was able to get my Xbox 360 setup to work with VUDU. I had to pay $59.99 for a year of Xbox LIVE gold to get it to work which kind of stinks, but, oh well. Even though my interned speed tested at 5.5 Mbps, I am only getting movies in HD, not HDX.

I watched the Ghost Rider trailer and it looked pretty good, but I would like to take advantage of HDX if my internet connection will actually support it.

 Do you have Comcast? I have the best home service from them, and I am directly connected to the PS3 (everything else wifi) via ethernet, and I maxed out their testing, 9Meg+.

 It's expensive, and kind of a pain, but there are several devices here all connected and I HATE slowdowns or lag in my internet.

 Sucks that you had to pay for it on the 360. You probably could have bought a used PS3, they don't charge you to go online, and the PS3 is a far superior device (as far as the tech involved).

[randytsuch]

So this thread just made me go check out VUDU.

Looks nice, and I have a PC connected to my TV, so it would be easy to try, but $6 for the Grey in HDX? 
For $1.50 I can rent a blu ray from red box.  Not as convenient for sure, but for the price difference I think I will stick with discs.

Randy

[Rclark]

 Redbox is a pain, you have to drive to it, stand in line, and there's no guarantee they will have what you want, or if they have what you want, it might be sold out! And then you have to remember to take your disc and drive back to the Redbox, stand in line, and return it It's cheap because it has to be.

 Did you register? Did you see the cloud service they offer? Pretty damned cool.

 

[ajzepp]

I'm glad we have choices like Redbox, Blockbuster Express and Netflix...but you'll always pay a premium for the convenience factor. The Redbox and BB Express that are local to me have blurays for less money, but they seem to tailor more to the dvd market than the bluray one and as Rclark said you have to travel to and fro in order to use the service. Not everyone will favor something like Vudu over the others, but I really couldn't be happier with the quality of the service. It's not like you're locked in to a membership or something....you just rent as little or as often as you want...when you want to use the service it's there...when you dont, there are other options to take advantage of. Personally, I hope Vudu really takes hold cause I always want to know that I have bluray quality available to me anytime I want it.

[Rclark]

 You know what else I like about them? They give you a synopsis of each movie, and also the official trailer, and also a free 2 minute preview. A little testdrive. And those are also blasted at you. One just get a sense of a really premium experience.

 And you see your rating, the community rating, and the Rotten Tomatoes rating. The other services pay no attention to this, or like netflix, blind you to the world once you've rated.

 Whoever is in charge of this service knows exactly what people want.

 

[ajzepp]

Definitely agree. I find myself looking up the RT rating on movies all the time, so it's great having it right there. Good point about the trailers, as well. Something else I've come across recently is their "collections" section. I'm a big fan of smaller indy films and they have a "Tribeca" section that has all the films that were tops at not only that festival but also some of the others. They also have other categories in the collections section that are interesting. YOu're exactly right that they seem to know exactly what the moviegoer wants out of a site...and quite honestly, even the standard def streaming is still a very nice image. I love how they tier their price structure so for those who don't need to see The Grey in 1080p you have other less expensive options.