PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN - DISNEY PROVIDING CONTENT TO VUDU

DISNEY PROVIDING CONTENT TO VUDU

The video-on-demand website Vudu, which offers some 16,000 movies for rent and sale -- a $149 settop player is necessary to view them on TV sets -- announced Thursday that it will host Disney's online offering of 69 titles in true 1080p high-definition. Titles include such films as the three Pirates of the Caribbean movie and Oscar winner No Country for Old Men but do not include any of Disney's classic animated features like Snow White and Bambi. Analysts pointed out, however, that few people have purchased devices for showing downloaded content on their TV sets. Russ Crupnick, an analyst for The NPD Group, said data indicates that the number of people who have done so make up less than 1 percent of the total movie-watching population. "The audience is beyond tiny," he said, "and we're still not seeing an uptake in the settop download market."

05/06/2009