TechPulse 360

At a press conference last night, Vudu unveiled its new “streamed” user interface (UI) “living in the cloud” with movie recommendation service Rotten Tomatoes.

Vudu downplays own set-top box

Last August, the HD streaming video service, which directly competes with Amazon HD, resurfaced as a 100% “cloud” service, with both the UI and the video content being streamed over the Internet. “We launched our streaming service on Aug 31st and this will be the third update of the service since then… versus having to update the firmware [of the set-top box or TV] every time you want to change a font or tweak the UI,” said Vudu executive vice president of strategy Ed Lichty.

The Santa Clara, Calif.-based startup is now licensing its technology to “high-volume” consumer electronics makers such as LG and Mitsubishi – which embed Vudu in their flat-screen TVs and Blu-Ray players – and has mostly given up trying selling its own set-top box for $150.

“When we launched originally (in 2007) the UI and everything was resident on the box… We still sell it [the box], we still support it, they’re very important customers for us, but the future for sure is in this embedded world,” explained Lichty to me.

Largest HD movie selection on the Web, “buy to own”

Vudu claims to provide “a-la carte” nearly all the latest DVD movies available (over 16,000 now) – while Netflix is focused on older content – and to be the only one streaming 1080p HD content (2,200 titles) with its HDX technology (which does require a minimum bandwidth of 4.5Mbps), when Amazon is still limited to 780p.

That’s in part due to Vudu’s proprietary compression technology and its use of content delivery networks (CDN).

At this point, only a handful of online HD movies are available for sale (buy to own), from Disney and some independent movie studios. “That’s a big area we’re pushing for in our studio relationships right now… if they [movie studios] want people to buy and own digital content, it really needs to be in HD.”

No Web channel support yet

However, Vudu’s new cloud service does not support Internet services yet – but the set-top box does – like YouTube, Pandora, Flickr or Picasa, but promised it will be added soon. “We understand there’s real demand for it and we do plan to expand to include these services at some point,” added Lichty.

No Hulu on TVs

Finally, Lichty confided that he doesn’t see the Hulu content coming to set-top boxes or other consumer electronics devices like TVs or Blu-Ray players anytime soon because it will compete head-to-head with the studio relationships with their cable partners.

Follows is my conversation with Lichty,

… as well as Lichty formal presentation of the new service at the Dolby theatre.

Finally, is a short video of Dolby marketing director John Griffin, giving a tour of the company’s “reference” theatre, which is a very quiet “box in a box,” ideal to showcase movie premieres: