Later today, Wikipedia movie content (and more) joins Rotten Tomatoes coverage on Vudu partner hardware. As a refresher, Vudu began life as a peer-to-peer movie streaming service via their dedicated hardware. After some layoffs, restructuring, and refinancing, they emerged with a hardware diversification strategy and a focus on supplemental web content. Additionally, the P2P streaming was dropped in favor of a more traditional (and scalable, dependable, etc-able) content delivery network (CDN) solution.
All in all, Vudu’s done well these last few months. And their streaming web interface allows them to make on-the-fly enhancements, like Wikipedia info, without burdening them with partner/manufacturer QA processes and firmware updates. However, do you really want to read all of Wikipedia on your television? (Not I.) Also, I have to wonder if a purely web-based UI leaves them vulnerable to outages and latency. Regardless, my desire for the highly rated LG BD 390 networked Blu-ray player ($260), that provides streaming Netflix, YouTube, and Vudu VOD, continues to grow.
