New Details and Screenshots of the Vudu Video-On-Demand Box

As I said, it’s a hybrid peer-to-peer network, built to deliver instant playback of any of any of the 5,000 movies in its planned library. The first few seconds of each movie will already be stored on your box, so that you get a satisfying instant-play feeling even as its caching the download. A central server should mean satisfactory playback from the beginning, when there aren’t many boxes deployed. The same system should also guarantee Vudu won’t have the same high-demand p2p choke-up that Joost suffered recently. (Congestion-wise, it also helps Vudu that this is a pay-for-play service.)