Vudu expanding in Best Buy outlets

HOME MEDIA EXPO: Company also bundling device with TVs

By Susanne Ault -- Video Business, 6/26/2008

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2008 Home Media Expo

JUNE 26 | LAS VEGAS—Vudu will expand in-store sales of its boxes to 50 additional Best Buy outlets shortly, according to company executive Jonathan Marlow at Thursday’s Home Media Expo here.

This spring, Vudu’s device, which beams films to TVs without the use of a computer, launched inside bricks-and-mortar retail at two-dozen Best Buy stores in California. Prior to that time, Vudu boxes were just being offered through the company’s own Web site and at Amazon.com.

With this Best Buy expansion to about 75 outlets, Vudu boxes will be sold in such new chain markets as Chicago.

Vudu faces a number of competitors that offer similar box-to-TV broadband video solutions, including Apple TV and Netflix’s Roku. However, Vudu is having luck cross-marketing TV sets and its boxes to consumers through collaborations with TV manufacturers.

“It helps if [Vudu] is bundled with a flat-screen TV, and the manufacturer subsidizes the cost of the Vudu box,” Marlow said. “That is how you do it.”

Additionally, certain regional cable operators are likewise subsidizing Vudu boxes inside homes, in a similarly cross-promotional strategy.

“These are regional companies that don’t currently have a video-on-demand solution,” said Marlow, which is unlike many large cable operators such as Time Warner and Comcast with significant VOD infrastructures. The regional companies "see it as an opportunity to up sell extra service in the home.”

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