Attention Vudu owners-

You now have the privilege of downloading and owning HD movies from an on demand online distributor. There are roughly 50 titles that you can download in both HD and HDX. Magnolia, Kino and FirstLook are among the indie studios who have films available at the moment including “Man on Wire.”

But don’t let the capacity of your box hinder you from downloading content because you can use the Vault to store your movies. The HD content is priced between $14 and $24. That is all.

Vudu is getting into the Black Friday tussle with sales on their movies. There are going to be four HDX titles, six HD movies, and a bunch of standard definition movies all for $4.99 each. So if you’re looking for a reason to stay off the roads on Black Friday, pick up the appropriate beverages Wednesday and plan for a snow day with Vudu, Friday.

Vudu via EngHD

Vudu’s HD catalog is officially the largest available from any service and even surpasses physical media. In the month of October Vudu added over 150 HD titles per week to reach this historical milestone. Their recently announced HDX service now has over 150 titles as well.

Today, they added 35 HDX titles and 398 HD titles, which we’ve listed after the jump in alphabetical order because we love you!

HD titles:

12 Angry Men
21 Hours at Munich
A Dry White Season
A Fistful of Dynamite
A Great Wall
A Hole in the Head
A Kiss Before Dying
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy
A Rumor of Angels
A Slipping Down Life
Adios Sabata
Alfie
Alien vs. Predator
Ambush Bay
American Ninja
Angel Unchained
Art School Confidential
Article 99
At First Sight
Avalanche
Avanti!
Baby Boom
Barfly
Behind Enemy Lines
Ben-Hur
Beverly Hills Cop 2
Beverly Hills Cop 3
Black Girl
Blade Runner (Director’s Cut)
Blue State
Body Heat
Border Cop [aka The Border]
Braveheart
Breaker! Breaker!
Brian’s Song
Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia
Bucktown
Bull Durham
Bulletproof Monk
Caveman
Child’s Play
China Doll
Cinderella Man
City of Industry
Clambake
Close Encounters of the Third Kind (Director’s Cut)
Clue
Code of Silence
Coffy
Colors
Company Business
Confessions of an American Girl
Convoy
Cool Blue
Cooley High
Cops and Robbers
Count Yorga, Vampire
Courage Under Fire
CQ
Crimes and Misdemeanors
Crisscross
Crusoe
Curse of the Pink Panther
Cutter’s Way
Cyborg Soldier
Dance with Me, Henry
Dark Blue
Davy Crockett, Indian Scout
Day Watch [Dnevnoy Dozor]
Days of Thunder
Death Rides a Horse
Desperately Seeking Susan
Die Hard With a Vengeance
Die, Monster, Die!
Diggstown
Dirty Work
Distant Voices, Still Lives
Double Trouble
Dr. Phibes Rises Again
Easy Money
Electra Glide in Blue
Enter the Ninja
Erik the Viking
Escape from Alcatraz
Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex, But Were Afraid to Ask
Exodus
F.I.S.T.
F/X
F/X 2
Fantastic Four
Farewell to the King
Fay Grim
Fiddler on the Roof
Fight Club
Flesh and Blood
Fluke
Follow That Dream
For Those Who Think Young
For Us, the Living: The Story of Medgar Evers
For Your Consideration
Force 10 from Navarone
Friday the 13th: Part 2
From Noon Till Three
Futureworld
Gattaca
Ghost Warrior
Ghoulies
Ghoulies 2
Grave of the Vampire
Gun the Man Down
Hang ‘em High
Happy Endings
Hard Promises
He Who Must Die
Hercules Against the Barbarians
High Tide
Hoodlum
Hoosiers
Hot Dog… The Movie
House of D
House of Games
How to Beat the High Cost of Living
How to Murder Your Wife
How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying
Huckleberry Finn
Hurricane Streets
I Escaped from Devil’s Island
I Love You, Don’t Touch Me!
I, Robot
Ice Age
Ice Age: The Meltdown
If It’s Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium
If Lucy Fell
In the Name of the King
Inherit the Wind
Inserts
Inspector Clouseau
Interiors
Invasion of the Body Snatchers
Iphigenia
Irma La Douce
It Runs in the Family
Jason’s Lyric
Johnny Be Good
Khartoum
Kid Colter
Kid Galahad
King of Hearts
King of New York
Kingdom of Heaven
Kings of the Sun
L.A. Bounty
L.A. Streetfighters
Lady Chatterley’s Lover
Last Tango in Paris
Lawman
Legend of the Lost
Lenny
Leviathan
Life Stinks
Little Man Tate
Little Miss Sunshine
Little Monsters
Livin’ Large!
Lone Wolf McQuade
Lupo
Mac and Me
Mad Max
Mademoiselle
Madhouse
Making Mr. Right
Man of the East
Man on Fire
Manhattan
Me, Myself and Irene
Memories of Me
Men of Honor
Mermaids
Midnight Cowboy
Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous
Miss Julie
Mississippi Burning
Moby Dick
Moonlight and Valentino
Moulin Rouge
Mr. and Mrs. Smith (Unrated)
Mr. Majestyk
Mr. Mom
Much Ado About Nothing
Murder at 1600
Music from Another Room
My American Cousin
My Beautiful Laundrette
Mystic Pizza
Napoleon
Navajo Joe
Nim’s Island
Nobody’s Fool
Number One
Octavia
Once Upon a Time in America
One, Two, Three
Osama
Pajama Party
Paper Lion
Parents
Personal Velocity
Phaedra
Phone Booth
Pit and the Pendulum
Planet of the Vampires
Platoon
Play Dirty
Poltergeist 2: The Other Side
Pootie Tang
Popi
Pork Chop Hill
Posse
Posse
Prisoner of the Mountains
Pumpkinhead
Pursuit
Pussycat, Pussycat, I Love You
Queen of Hearts
Quigley Down Under
Radio Days
Rancho Deluxe
Raw Meat
Real Men
Rebel in Town
Red Dawn
Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins
Reprise
Reptilicus
Return of Sabata
Return of the Magnificent Seven
Revolt at Fort Laramie
Revolution
Rich Kids
Road House
Robbers’ Roost
Robocop 2
Rolling Thunder
Romeo Is Bleeding
Running Scared
Sabata
Salt and Pepper
Scandalous
Scarecrows
Scooby-Doo in Where’s My Mummy?
Scream and Scream Again
Semi-Tough
Shadows and Fog
Shanghai Surprise
Shutter
Silent Hill
Sleepover
Soapdish
Some Girls
Species 3
Species: The Awakening
Star Trek 6: The Undiscovered Country
Stay Hungry
Storefront Hitchcock
Straight Out of Brooklyn
Street Kings
Super Troopers
Support Your Local Sheriff
Sweet Smell of Success
Swing Shift
Tales of Terror
Tank Girl
Teachers
Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines
Terror in a Texas Town
The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert
The Amityville Horror
The Baby-Sitters Club
The Barefoot Contessa
The Battle of El Alamein
The Bed Sitting Room
The Charge of the Light Brigade
The Charge of the Model-T’s
The Chocolate War
The Conversation
The Couch Trip
The Counterfeiters
The Dark Half
The Day After Tomorrow
The Defiant Ones
The Delinquents
The Dirty Dozen: The Fatal Mission
The Dogs of War
The Food of the Gods
The Foot Fist Way
The Gallant Hours
The Garbage Pail Kids Movie
The Greatest Story Ever Told
The Group
The Gunfight at Dodge City
The Hard Word
The Hawaiians
The Honey Pot
The Horror Show
The Hospital
The Hotel New Hampshire
The In Crowd
The Jewel of the Nile
The Job
The Juror
The King and Four Queens
The Knack, and How to Get It
The Last Man on Earth
The Long Goodbye
The Longest Day
The Lover
The Magnificent Seven
The Magnificent Seven Ride!
The Maltese Falcon
The Masque of the Red Death
The Mighty Quinn
The Neanderthal Man
The Omen
The Organization
The Package
The Peacekillers
The People That Time Forgot
The Pink Panther Strikes Again
The Playboys
The Pope of Greenwich Village
The Presidio
The Pride and the Passion
The Punisher
The Purple Rose of Cairo
The Relentless Four
The Resurrected
The Return of a Man Called Horse
The Return of Dracula
The Return of the Living Dead
The Return of the Pink Panther
The Revolt of the Slaves
The Right Stuff
The Rock
The Rookie
The Running Man
The Scalphunters
The Secret of NIMH
The Secret of Santa Vittoria
The Sentinel
The Taking of Pelham One Two Three
The Thomas Crown Affair
The Train
The Virgin Suicides
The White Buffalo
The Wonderful Country
The Young Savages
Thelma and Louise
This World, Then the Fireworks
Thrashin’
Three Kings
Throw Momma From the Train
To Kill For
To Live and Die in L.A.
Topkapi
Trail of the Pink Panther
Transporter 2
Troll
UHF
Undertow
Undiscovered
Unforgettable
Unforgiven
Urban Cowboy
Valdez Is Coming
Welcome to Woop Woop
What Happens in Vegas (Unrated)
What’s New Pussycat?
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Windtalkers
Witness for the Prosecution
Wooly Boys
X-Men: The Last Stand
X2: X-Men United
Yellowbeard
Yentl
Young Billy Young
Youngblood
Yours, Mine and Ours

HDX titles:

Alien vs. Predator
Day Watch [Dnevnoy Dozor]
Distant Voices, Still Lives
Fight Club
Finding Amanda
Happy Endings
House of D
Ice Age
King of New York
Little Miss Sunshine
Men of Honor
Mission: Impossible 2
Mr. and Mrs. Smith (Unrated)
Nim’s Island
Platoon
Shutter
Silent Hill
Speed
Star Trek 4: The Voyage Home
Street Kings
Super Troopers
The Day After Tomorrow
The Job
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
The Matrix Revolutions
The Punisher
The Rock
The Rookie
The Running Man
To Live and Die in L.A.
Top Gun
Transporter 2
Undiscovered
What Happens in Vegas (Unrated)
Wooly Boys

Vudu

Best Buy now carries Vudu and is offering new customers a $200 credit for a limited time.

How good is it? Hit the jump for comparisons and to learn about Vudu’s TruFilm Technology.

TruFilm is made up of the following components.

PSYCHOVISUAL PROCESSING
The human eye is not uniformly sensitive to detail in light and dark areas of an image. With careful use of this knowledge during encoding, it is possible to exploit this sensitivity difference to improve the compression of the video and the perceived detail. The simplest forms of this have been in place for many years in digital video. For example, chroma subsampling reduces the amount of bandwidth allocated to the color channels, since the human eye is much more sensitive to luminance (brightness) than it is to chrominance (color).

VUDU’s encoder uses more advanced algorithms than used in the past by taking into consideration changes in brightness. The eye is much more sensitive to high frequency (fine texture) detail in bright areas. As a result it is possible to reallocate bits from lower-complexity parts of the image in order to noticeably boost quality. Other encoders have the tendency to overly reallocate from large flat areas which can introduce blocking artifacts to the image. The Adaptive Quantization functionality in VUDU’s encoder considers scenarios such as these and more intelligently allocates data within the frame. As a result, VUDU is able to improve overall image quality with enhanced details in dark areas of the picture while virtually removing the artifacts typically present and often noticed in other Internet-delivered or broadcast video.

FILM GRAIN PRESERVATION
As an analog medium, film inherits a large part of its look and feel from the chemistry of the film itself. This is most visible to the viewer as film grain. The amount and look of the grain is the result of the film stock and the exposure settings used by the filmmaker. Directors and photographers go to great lengths in selecting the appropriate film and settings to give their movies the look and feel that they want to communicate. Modern digital video encoding techniques often remove much the film grain either intentionally (because it looks similar to noise in the image) or through accident (because the encoder over-compresses the video and loses detail, including the grain). . This
results in an encoded picture that not only fails to preserve the vision of the filmmaker but also displays visible artifacts in grainy underexposed areas of the picture. VUDU’s Film Grain Preservation technology detects this film grain prior to encoding and ensures that the film grain is preserved and present on the video for display to the viewer.

STATISTICAL VARIABLE BIT RATE
As discussed above, while VBR encoding offers potentially better quality, it is difficult to stream as compared to CBR encodings. This can lead to a choice between downloading a high-quality video for delayed, offline viewing and streaming a lower-quality video for instant gratification. VUDU employs a carefully-controlled application of HDX by VUDU 9 VBR encoding called Statistical Variable Bit Rate that optimizes the beginning of the movie for quick streaming access and then enforces a peak bit rate limit on the rest of the movie to aid in predictability. Additionally, VUDU’s encoder performs multiple encoding passes over the video to help make intelligent rate control decisions, while
maintaining a “variable bit rate buffer”, which essentially allows for variability in bit rate without breaking the average and maximum bit rate constraints. All of this helps preserve the quality of the film while providing the predictability required, allowing instant viewing of the movie over the Internet.

COLOR GRADIENT PROCESSING
Many video compression systems create pictures that are optimized for CRT displays, rather than modern LCD and Plasma digital displays. The display characteristics of the latter displays are different from that of the CRT, and can expose artifacts that may remain well-hidden in CRTs. A common example of such artifacts is visible in images with subtle color gradients, such as an expanse of blue depicting a cloudless sky. In such images, one can often see banding or “false contouring” on an LCD or Plasma display while a CRT might be more forgiving. VUDU designed its hardware and encoding software with these display technologies in mind. Through a technique
known as Color Gradient Processing VUDU identifies potential trouble areas present in an image and tunes the image for the best result possible with LCD and Plasma flat panel displays.

Those long download times are true, but Vudu is hoping you’ll queue HDX movies online or hours before you’re ready to watch. I’m down with picking out movies online while I’m at work, so they’re ready to go when I get home.

High-res

High-res

HP and the rest of the laptop world are dumping hundreds of laptops tomorrow, but the HDX seems to stand out in a potentially crowded news day. It’s essentially a huge media center with a tilting screen and HD DVD drive and HDTV tuner. How much will it cost? About $2,000 with only a few of the extras and expect the price to rise stratospherically with the add-ons.

It also runs Santa Rosa so you’ll get 802.11n. Another amazing thing? It’s got a 400GB hard drive. Seriously. HUGE.

The Dragon: HP Pavilion HDX 20-inch Notebook Announced [Notebooks.com]
Press Release