Vudu Boxes Now Stream 1080p Movie Rentals

By Nick Mokey October 2, 2008

Owners of Vudu set-top boxes got a little more out of their systems on Thursday when the company opened up availability of movie rentals in full HD, allowing users to view on-demand movies and other content in 1080p resolution. Vudu calls its new format HDX, a form of compression that shrinks files enough to offer HD content without download times, but also without the artifacts and quality sacrifice typically associated with high compression.

The company employed a number of new technologies to make streaming 1080p video through home Internet connections possible. Pyschovisual processing, for instance, preserves detail in the darkest parts of an image where quality is typically lost, while variable bitrate technology allocates more data to scenes with the most motion and detail.

Vudu’s initial offering of 65 HDX titles includes new movies like 21 and Speed Racer alongside classics like The Jerk and Saturday Night Fever. Although the movies range in rental price, the HDX versions carry no price premium from the versions offered in 720p high definition.

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Buying a new TV can be a fun-filled adventure -- but also an agonizing nightmare. In stores and online, you're bombarded with terms like HDR, OLED, QLED, 4K Ultra HD and Full HD. But what do they mean? Well, the latter two are resolutions, and they're used to indicate the number of pixels on a screen. As far as TV lingo goes, the more pixels there are, the better the picture quality. To understand why, though, we have to look at each resolution a bit more closely. Only then can you start considering what screen size is best and finally start taking a look at our list of the best 4K TVs to find the television of your dreams.
Pixels
Pixels are the building blocks for every display you've ever seen. They're tiny little dots that, together, make up the picture you see on a screen. You can only see these pixels if you're fairly close to the screen, of course. From a proper viewing distance, thousands of them blend to make the image on your screen.

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1080p
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4K Ultra HD
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