Vudu beats service providers to the open Web

Vudu isn’t looking to replace the linear TV experience yet, but it is banking on Web extras to increase the value of its Internet movie STB. In the past year, Vudu has added more high-definition movies and movies at 1080p, bringing its library to more than 10,000 titles. The box now costs $299, down from its initial price tag of $399, and includes a $200 credit for downloads, which start at 99 cents for basic rentals and $4.99 to purchase. The RIA is the next step in its live, open platform as it continues to grow, Miranz said.

“This has been a tremendous amount of work for our company, but we are glad we have put together a very sophisticated development environment that brings together our world-class UI together with Internet content running on top of a very lightweight hardware platform,” Miranz said. “Developers are going to find out we have a set of very powerful APIs, and we are looking forward to a lot of apps becoming available in the first quarter of 2009.”