Fandango at Home

Last updated

Fandango at Home
FormerlyVudu (2005–2024)
Company type Subsidiary
Industry Entertainment
Founded2004;20 years ago (2004)
Founders Alain Rossmann
Tony Miranz
Headquarters
Beverly Hills, California
,
United States
Area served
United States
Services Video on demand
Parent
Website Fandango at home
Footnotes /references
[1]

Fandango at Home (formerly known as Vudu) is an American digital video store and streaming service owned by Fandango Media, a joint-venture between NBCUniversal and Warner Bros. Discovery. The company offers transactional video on demand rentals and digital purchases of films, as well as integration with digital locker services for streaming digital copies of films purchased as home video at retail.

Contents

The service initially focused on a digital media player known as the Vudu Box. In 2010, the company began to abandon its hardware business, and focus on integrating its service and associated app platform into third-party devices such as televisions and Blu-ray Disc players. The company has since offered its services online, via mobile apps, and on devices such as digital media players and smart TVs. [2]

In 2010, Vudu was sold to Walmart. In 2020, Fandango Media acquired Vudu for an undisclosed amount. While initially maintaining the Vudu name due to brand recognition, Fandango Media nevertheless rebranded the service under the Fandango brand in 2024.

History

Vudu was founded by Tony Miranz and Alain Rossmann (the creator of the Wireless Application Protocol). The Vudu Box had been secretly in development since 2004, but in April 2007, The New York Times revealed Vudu had signed deals with several movie studios and independent distributors to deliver access to nearly 5,000 films. [3]

As of April 2007, Vudu had received $21 million in venture capital funding from Greylock Partners and Benchmark Capital. [4] The company is based in Santa Clara, California.

In May 2008, Vudu began displaying and selling its set-top box in Best Buy stores. Before this, the box was only available via online retailers. [5] In October, Vudu announced that it would begin to stream films in 1080p high definition, branded as "HDX". [6] These films would feature a series of encoding and processing techniques branded as "TruFilm", including the dampening of artifacting and pixelation associated with darker areas of pictures, film grain preservation, "color gradient processing" to improve appearance on flat-panel televisions, and "statistical variable bitrate" to optimize streaming performance. [6]

On February 24, 2009, Vudu became the first on-demand service to offer high-definition movies for download to own. Prior to Vudu allowing users to purchase high-definition movies, studios only allowed their films to be purchased in standard-definition format. [7] LG was the first to integrate Vudu into its HDTVs, with access beginning in August 2009 through the television's NetCast application. [8] [9]

On January 8, 2010, at Consumer Electronics Show, Vudu announced that it would phase out its in-house hardware business in favor of focusing on integration of its rich Internet application platform, [10] "Vudu Apps" (which featured Vudu as well as other streaming video and internet services), directly into internet-connected televisions and Blu-ray players, with initial hardware partners including LG, Magnavox, Mitsubishi, Samsung, Sanyo, Sharp, Toshiba, and Vizio. [11] [12]

On February 22, 2010, Walmart announced its intent to acquire Vudu. The company had previously attempted to offer digital video sales in 2007, but the service folded due to competition with the iTunes Store. [13] To comply with Walmart's content policies, Vudu subsequently discontinued its "After Dark" service (a collaboration with AVN), which offered pornographic content. [14]

In 2012, Vudu partnered with UltraViolet, an industry-backed digital locker offering online streaming of retail DVD and Blu-ray disc purchases. [15] In 2014, Vudu also joined Disney's competing Movies Anywhere initiative. [16]

In February 2020, it was reported that Comcast (via NBCUniversal) had entered talks into acquiring Vudu from Walmart. [17]

Vudu 2014 logo with Fandango byline Vudu 2014 logo with Fandango byline.svg
Vudu 2014 logo with Fandango byline

In April 2020, it was announced that NBCUniversal subsidiary Fandango Media would acquire Vudu for an undisclosed amount; the sale closed on July 6, 2020. [18] Fandango is minority owned by Warner Bros., and operated the similar service FandangoNow. As part of the sale, Walmart will maintain its relationships with Vudu, including account integration and promotion of the service via Walmart's website. [19] [20]

On August 3, 2021, FandangoNow was merged into Vudu. [21] Fandango chose to retain the "Vudu" name as it was the larger service and had better brand recognition. As a result of a prior agreement with Roku, Inc. inherited from Fandango acquisition M-Go, Vudu would also become the official digital media storefront of Roku digital media players. [22]

In June 2023, AMC Theatres (which has been a long-time partner of Fandango's online movie ticketing service) announced that Vudu would subsume its AMC Theatres On Demand service, with its library being transferred to the platform and upgraded to higher quality formats where applicable. Users would be able to migrate to Vudu through August 31, 2023. [23]

On February 16, 2024, it was announced that the service would be rebranded as "Fandango at Home" to unify it with its parent company. [24] This took effect March 12, 2024. [25]

Content

As of June 2019, Vudu's selection contains over 24,000 titles in their catalog and over 8,000 television shows.[ citation needed ] Titles range from major motion pictures, independent films, documentaries, children's programming, anime, musicals, recorded musical performances, cartoons, and television series. Vudu has established content licensing contracts with all major movie studios as well as over 50 smaller and independent studios. Films are available to rent in standard-definition, high-definition, and 4K ultra high definition formats, with Dolby Atmos, Dolby Vision, and HDR10 available on supported devices and content.

In October 2016, Vudu added a free, ad-supported streaming library to its platform in the United States branded as "Movies on Us", featuring recent and classic films. [26] [27] [2]

In October 2018, Vudu partnered with MGM Television to develop and acquire original programming for Movies on Us, with a focus on "family-friendly, advertiser-friendly content" derived from existing MGM properties. [26] Vudu premiered its first original series, Mr. Mom—a continuation of the 1983 film of the same name, on September 12, 2019. [28]

See also

Related Research Articles

Video on demand (VOD) is a media distribution system that allows users to access videos, television shows and films digitally on request. These multimedia are accessed without a traditional video playback device and a typical static broadcasting schedule, which was popular under traditional broadcast programming, instead involving newer modes of content consumption that have risen as Internet and IPTV technologies have become prominent, and culminated in the arrival of VOD and over-the-top (OTT) media services on televisions and personal computers.

iTunes Store Digital media store

iTunes Store is a digital marketplace selling music, music videos, ringtones and alert tones. It was launched by Apple Inc. on April 28, 2003 for macOS, and on October 16, 2003 for Microsoft Windows. It launched as a mobile application with iOS on June 29, 2007.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sky (New Zealand)</span> Pay television company in New Zealand

Sky Network Television Limited, more commonly known as Sky, is a New Zealand broadcasting company that provides pay television services via satellite, media streaming services, and broadband internet services. As of 31 December 2022, Sky had 1,023,378 residential television subscribers consisting of 517,003 satellite subscribers and 506,375 streaming subscribers. Additionally, Sky had 23,156 broadband customers. Despite the similarity of name, branding and services, such as Sky Go and MySky shared with its European equivalent, Sky Group, there is no connection between the companies.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fandango Media</span> American media corporation

Fandango Media, LLC is an American ticketing company that sells movie tickets via their website and their mobile app. It also owns Fandango at Home, a streaming digital video store and streaming service, as well as Rotten Tomatoes, which provides television and streaming media information.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">NBCUniversal</span> American media and entertainment conglomerate

NBCUniversal Media, LLC is an American multinational mass media and entertainment conglomerate that is a subsidiary of Comcast and is headquartered at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in Midtown Manhattan in New York City.

Starz is an American premium cable and satellite television network owned by Starz Entertainment, and is the flagship property of parent subsidiary Starz Inc. Launched in 1994 as a multiplex service of Starz Encore, programming on Starz consists of theatrically released motion pictures and first-run original television series.

Amazon Prime Video, or simply Prime Video, is an American subscription video on-demand over-the-top streaming and rental service of Amazon offered both as a stand-alone service and as part of Amazon's Prime subscription. The service primarily distributes films and television series produced or co-produced by Amazon MGM Studios or licensed to Amazon, as Amazon Originals, with the service also hosting content from other providers, content add-ons, live sporting events, and video rental and purchasing services.

Flixster was an American social-networking movie website for discovering new movies, learning about movies, and meeting others with similar tastes in movies. It is currently owned by Fandango Media. The formerly independent site, allowed users to view movie trailers as well as learn about new and upcoming movies at the box office. It was originally based in San Francisco and was founded by Joe Greenstein and Saran Chari on January 20, 2006. It was also the former parent company of Rotten Tomatoes from January 2010 to February 17, 2016. On February 17, 2016, Flixster, including Rotten Tomatoes, was acquired by Fandango.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Plex Inc.</span> Streaming media service

Plex Inc. is an American software company that runs its namesake ad-supported television and movie streaming service, and allows discussion and discovery of content on major subscription streaming services. Plex also develops media server software and apps to let users stream their personal media collections to their devices. Plex Inc. is based in Campbell, California.

The Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem was a consortium of major film studios, consumer electronics manufacturers and retailers, networking hardware vendors, systems integrators, and digital rights management (DRM) vendors listed below. The consortium was announced in September 2008 by its president, Mitch Singer, who was also the chief technology officer (CTO) of Sony Pictures Entertainment at the time. DECE was chartered to develop a set of standards for the digital distribution of premium Hollywood content. The consortium created a set of rules and a back-end system for the management of those rules that enabled consumers to share purchased digital content among a domain of registered consumer electronics devices.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Movies Anywhere</span> Digital locker and streaming platform

Movies Anywhere(MA) is a cloud-based digital rights locker and over-the-top streaming platform that allows users to stream and download purchased films, including digital copies redeemed from codes found in home video releases as well as digital purchases from participating services. Movies Anywhere is operated by The Walt Disney Company. The platform provides content from Walt Disney Studios, Sony Pictures, Universal Pictures, and Warner Bros. The system utilizes an internal platform known as KeyChest, which synchronizes content licenses from digital distribution platforms linked to a central user account.

UltraViolet was a cloud-based digital rights locker for films and television programs that allowed consumers to store proofs-of-purchase of licensed content in an account to enable playback on different devices using multiple applications from several different streaming services. UltraViolet also allowed users to share access to their library with up to five additional people. UltraViolet was deployed by the Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem (DECE), an alliance of 85 companies that included film studios, retailers, consumer electronics manufacturers, cable television companies, internet service providers (ISPs), internet hosting vendors, and other systems and security vendors, with the notable exceptions of Walt Disney Studios, Google, Amazon and Apple.

Flipkart Private Limited is an Indian e-commerce company, headquartered in Bangalore, and incorporated in Singapore as a private limited company. The company initially focused on online book sales before expanding into other product categories such as consumer electronics, fashion, home essentials, groceries, and lifestyle products.

An over-the-top media service is a digital distribution service offered directly to viewers via the public Internet, rather than through an over-the-air, cable, or satellite-based provider. The term is synonymous with "streaming platform", such as Netflix and Amazon Prime Video which provide access to subscription-based film and television content (SVoD).

Electronic sell-through (EST) is a method of media distribution whereby consumers pay a one-time fee to download a media file for storage on a hard drive. Although EST is often described as a transaction that grants content "ownership" to the consumer, the content may become unusable after a certain period and may not be viewable using competing platforms. EST is used by a wide array of digital media products, including movies, television, music, games, and mobile applications. The term is sometimes used interchangeably with download to own (DTO).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Microsoft Movies & TV</span> Digital video service

Microsoft Movies & TV, or Microsoft Films & TV, previously Xbox Video and Zune Video, is a digital video service developed by Microsoft that offers full HD movies and TV shows available for rental or purchase in the Video Store as well as an app where users can watch and manage videos from their personal digital collections stored locally. The service is currently available on Xbox consoles beginning with Xbox One, and Microsoft Windows computers beginning with Windows 10.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Roku</span> Brand of streaming media players

Roku is a brand of consumer electronics that includes streaming players, smart TVs, as well as a free TV streaming service. The brand is owned by Roku, Inc., an American company. As of 2024, Roku is the leading streaming TV distributor in the U.S., reaching nearly 120 million people.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Paramount+</span> American video streaming service

Paramount+ is an American subscription video on-demand over-the-top streaming service owned by Paramount Global. The service's content is drawn primarily from the libraries of CBS Media Ventures, CBS Studios, Paramount Media Networks, and Paramount Pictures, while also including original series and films, live streaming sports coverage, and in the United States, live streaming of local CBS broadcast stations.

Peacock is an American over-the-top subscription streaming service owned and operated by Peacock TV, LLC, a subsidiary of NBCUniversal Media Group. Named after the NBC logo, the service launched on July 15, 2020.

References

  1. ↑ "Fandango at home – Watch Movies". Archived from the original on December 17, 2021. Retrieved December 17, 2021.
  2. 1 2 Spangler, Todd (October 18, 2016). "Walmart's Vudu Launches Free Movie, TV Service With Thousands of Titles". Variety. Archived from the original on April 29, 2020. Retrieved April 28, 2020.
  3. ↑ Stone, Brad (April 29, 2007). "Vudu Casts Its Spell on Hollywood". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331. Archived from the original on July 11, 2011. Retrieved June 15, 2011.
  4. ↑ "Faultline: Vudu, RawFlow and Joost all target web video services – Analyst Insights". HPInnovator. May 2, 2007. Archived from the original on September 28, 2007. Retrieved September 21, 2011.
  5. ↑ Ault, Susanne (May 22, 2008). "Vudu casts boxes onto Best Buy shelves". Video Business. Archived from the original on June 30, 2008. Retrieved September 21, 2011.
  6. 1 2 Ha, Peter (October 2, 2008). "Vudu officially announces full HD service, HDX". TechCrunch. Archived from the original on August 2, 2012. Retrieved September 21, 2011.
  7. ↑ "Press Release". VUDU. February 24, 2009. Archived from the original on March 24, 2009.
  8. ↑ Chabot, Jeff (July 29, 2009). "LG first to bring Hulu to HDTVs". HD Report. Archived from the original on October 6, 2011. Retrieved September 21, 2011.
  9. ↑ Albanesius, Chloe (February 22, 2010). "Wal-Mart Confirms Plans to Buy Vudu". PC Magazine. Archived from the original on May 11, 2024. Retrieved September 21, 2011.
  10. ↑ Wilson, Mark (December 16, 2008). "VUDU Offering 120 Channels of Free Media with New App Platform". Gizmodo. Archived from the original on February 13, 2012. Retrieved September 21, 2011.
  11. ↑ Pogue, David (February 10, 2010). "Vudu Lives (Outside the Box)". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331. Archived from the original on March 7, 2020. Retrieved April 28, 2020.
  12. ↑ Clark, Don (January 8, 2010). "New TV Apps Borrow a Page From iPhone". The Wall Street Journal. ISSN   0099-9660. Archived from the original on September 19, 2020. Retrieved April 28, 2020.
  13. ↑ Bustillo, Miguel (February 23, 2010). "Wal-Mart Re-Enters Digital Downloading of Movies With Purchase of Vudu". The Wall Street Journal. ISSN   0099-9660. Archived from the original on May 11, 2013. Retrieved September 21, 2011.
  14. ↑ Siegler, MG (February 24, 2010). "Hot And Bothered: Walmart Shutting Down Vudu's Adult Section". The Washington Post. Retrieved September 26, 2012.
  15. ↑ Keys, Phil (March 16, 2012). "Vudu/UltraViolet: Make or Break Moment for UltraViolet and Walmart". Forbes. Archived from the original on September 3, 2014. Retrieved August 29, 2014.
  16. ↑ "Disney Movies Anywhere Now Works with Vudu". Vudu Blog. November 17, 2014. Archived from the original on November 20, 2014. Retrieved April 11, 2015.
  17. ↑ Goldsmith, Jill (February 21, 2020). "Comcast in Talks To Buy Walmart's Streaming Service Vudu". Deadline. Archived from the original on February 23, 2020. Retrieved February 27, 2020.
  18. ↑ Lipman, Ashley (July 6, 2020). "Vudu is Now Officially Part of the Fandango Family". Xanjero. Archived from the original on July 8, 2020. Retrieved July 7, 2020.
  19. ↑ Brown, Shelby. "Walmart to sell Vudu to Fandango". CNET. Archived from the original on April 28, 2020. Retrieved April 28, 2020.
  20. ↑ Alexander, Julia (April 20, 2020). "Fandango just purchased Vudu from Walmart to better compete against Amazon, iTunes". The Verge. Archived from the original on April 21, 2020. Retrieved April 20, 2020.
  21. ↑ Welch, Chris (August 3, 2021). "Fandango chooses Vudu as the way forward for its streaming business". The Verge . Archived from the original on June 4, 2023. Retrieved March 18, 2024.
  22. ↑ Spangler, Todd (August 3, 2021). "Vudu Becomes Roku's Official Movie and TV Store, as Fandango Kills Off FandangoNow Brand". Variety. Archived from the original on March 15, 2024. Retrieved March 15, 2024.
  23. ↑ Forristal, Lauren (June 1, 2023). "AMC and Vudu score big with new on-demand streaming partnership". TechCrunch. Archived from the original on June 2, 2023. Retrieved June 2, 2023.
  24. ↑ Spangler, Todd (February 16, 2024). "NBCU Killing Off Vudu Brand, Will Rename Service 'Fandango at Home'". Variety. Archived from the original on May 11, 2024. Retrieved March 15, 2024.
  25. ↑ Bouma, Luke (March 12, 2024). "After 20 Years Vudu Is Now Called 'Fandango at Home'. What You Need to Know". Cord Cutters News. Archived from the original on March 12, 2024. Retrieved March 15, 2024.
  26. 1 2 Perez, Sarah (October 8, 2018). "Walmart partners with MGM on original programming for Vudu". TechCrunch. Archived from the original on October 20, 2019. Retrieved October 20, 2019.
  27. ↑ "Walmart launches a free streaming service, Vudu Movies on Us". TechCrunch. Retrieved April 28, 2020.
  28. ↑ Pedersen, Erik (August 26, 2019). "'Mr. Mom' Trailer: First Original Series From Walmart's Vudu Streaming Service". Deadline Hollywood. Archived from the original on August 27, 2019. Retrieved August 27, 2019.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.