Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Audio / Video
  3. News

Fandango buys Vudu because movie theaters are dead (for now)

Simon Cohen
By

What do you do when you’re a business that derives most of its earning from movie ticket sales, now that the movie theater business has been mothballed for the foreseeable future? If you’re Fandango, the answer is you buy Vudu, a movie streaming service with millions of potential viewers, from its current owner, Walmart.

The cost of the Vudu acquisition has not been released, but we do know a fair bit about Vudu itself. Unlike subscription streaming services like Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, or even Disney+, which offer an all-you-can-eat model for a monthly fee, Vudu is a movie rental business that has quietly grown over the years into an impressive streaming platform. It reaches more than 100 million living room devices across the U.S and its mobile app has been downloaded over 14.5 million times, according to TechCrunch.

Recommended Videos

It has supported 4K, Dolby Vision, and Dolby Atmos since 2015, making it one of the first platforms to do so, a move it followed up in 2017 by adding support for HDR10. As a movie purchase and rental service, Vudu belongs to the Movies Anywhere platform, which gives folks cloud-based access to all of the digital movies they own. It also has an impressive collection of ad-supported free movie rentals that you can stream, with titles like Batman Begins and The Cabin In The Woods.

Fandango already owns FandangoNow, a purchase and rental service it acquired under the name M-Go. On the surface, Vudu and FandangoNow appear to be very similar, but FandangoNow lacks Vudu’s ad-supported collection which will be helpful to expand its reach into new households.

Vudu will continue to power Walmart’s digital movie and TV store on Walmart.com and existing Vudu customers won’t see any changes to their ability to access their purchased movies. Walmart logins and the Walmart wallet will continue to work on Vudu, TechCrunch notes.

Fandango is best known for its movie ticket purchasing service, a line of business that has obviously been severely impacted by the coronavirus pandemic, officially known as COVID-19. The purchase of Vudu is both an expansion of its existing online movie rental business as well as a hedge against what might be a long-term turndown in the movie business. After all, even after theaters resume their normal operations, the pandemic has also affected the studios that create the movies, which adds even greater instability to an already uncertain outlook.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Simon Cohen
Simon Cohen
Contributing Editor, A/V
Simon Cohen covers a variety of consumer technologies, but has a special interest in audio and video products, like…
YouTube TV now available in 5.1 surround sound on Amazon Fire TV devices
youtube tv spanish language channels

In 2021, Google's YouTube let it be known that it had finally updated its YouTube TV subscription live TV streaming service with 5.1 surround sound, a move that had been eagerly anticipated by its subscribers since, well, forever. But it only covered select smart TV platforms like LG and Samsung. Then, in early June 2022, the service announced that more devices and platforms were joining the 5.1 party, with the addition of Roku, Android TV, and Google TV. But for some reason, Amazon's Fire TV, the most popular streaming platform in the world, didn't make the 5.1 cut. Until now.

As of June 23, 2022, Amazon says that, "Fire TV Stick 4k Max, Fire TV Stick, and Fire TV Stick Lite all now support YouTube TV's 5.1 surround sound feature." Curiously, Amazon has made no mention of its other Fire TV devices, like its own Fire TV Omni 4K TV, the original Fire TV Stick 4K, or the aging Fire TV Cube. Still, it appears that now pretty much everyone who wants YouTube TV in 5.1 surround sound can get it. Oh, well except for Apple TV owners and those who use game consoles to watch live TV streaming. These folks are still stuck in two-channel stereo, at least for the time being.

Read more
Be kind, rewind: How VHS shaped the way we watch movies
Video player with vhs cassette, neon light.

One of my earliest memories, from when I was four or five years old, is seeing a cardboard display case decked out with pristine copies of Tim Burton’s 1989 Batman movie, complete with the iconic bat symbol logo and striking yellow plastic packaging. This was my personal introduction to the world of VHS, a.k.a. the Video Home System. But due to the year I was born, I was also what some might call a member of the late majority — or even a laggard.

For those true early adopters, at least in the United States, the first glimpse at the VHS video player and cassette took place at a press conference prior to the annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in June 1977. That month -- the same one in which the Apple II computer went on sale, Oracle Corporation was founded, and Elvis performed his final concert before his death – the VHS made its stateside debut and changed the way we viewed entertainment in the process.

Read more
The best places to watch free movies online
Home Theater Popcorn

It sure seems like everybody these days is either cutting or has already cut the cable cord. With the sheer breadth and convenience of streaming services, it makes sense. You can find practically anything you want to watch on streaming services these days, but even they are getting more expensive by the year. If you're a real bargain hunter, you want to find ways to watch movies online for free. Believe it or not, legal and secure free movie resources do exist. We've found them all for you. Here is our list of the best places to watch free movies online.
The Roku Channel

When Roku initially launched its free, ad-supported Roku Channel, it wasn't technically eligible for this roundup because you had to have one of the company's streaming media devices to see it. Roku devices certainly won't break the bank, but they aren't free. Now, however, the Roku Channel is available to anyone via the web, as well as through the company's free apps for iOS and Android.

Read more