Hasta La Gadget!

“Love is in the air”, or so the song goes – which leads us to the question, have you gotten something for your other half this coming Valentine’s Day? If your blood froze when you heard the words “Valentine’s Day”, fret not – we know that boffins are notorious when it comes to forgetting anniversaries, birthdays and special occasions. Well, if you have run out of ideas as to what to purchase for your other half, how about this red Nextbook that will feature a special offer from VUDU, where you can pick from five movies for free as well as $5 credit that can be used for any rental.

This 8” Nextbook Android tablet comes in a special shade of red just in time for Valentine’s Day. It will run on Android 4.1 Jelly Bean as the mobile operating system of choice, and if you are interested in picking it up, it ought to be readily available at select Walmart stores nationwide as well as over their website, Walmart.com.

Jason Liszewski, managing director and vice president of sales for E FUN, shared, “We are proud to offer Nextbook consumers a unique experience for Valentine’s Day with the VUDU special offer. With your choice of five free movies to download from a list of more than 25 titles and $5 in rental credit, you and your Valentine will have weekend-long entertainment available at your fingertips.”

Apart from that, the Nextbook Premium 8HD will also boast of Google Play and preloaded Android apps from Google, in addition to the Barnes and Noble NOOK for Android app. Other hardware specifications include a dual-core processor and 8GB of internal memory, dual webcams, an HDMI-out port, a USB 2.0 port, and a microSD card slot. The asking price? $99 a pop. That ain’t too shabby for what seems to be an entry level tablet, don’t you think so?
[ Red Nextbook Android-powered tablets from E FUN and VUDU copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]

Sony Pictures Home Entertainment and the Walmart video streaming service Vudu have announced a tie up that will bring an enhanced viewing experience to movie watching fans. The new service is Vudu Extras+ and it allows streaming viewers to enjoy the same sort of extras typically available on DVD and Blu-ray titles. The Extras+ service […]

The Google Fiber Android app got an update today that adds support for Vudu, adding another over-the-top video service along with Netflix and YouTube. The support pages for its Vudu setup seemingly date back to August 5th, but we haven’t heard anything about the launch from either company. According to its change log, the update will allow viewers to search for and view content across their TV and mobile screens, although the iPad app hasn’t received any update yet. Also new to the Android version are channel shortcuts in the main menu for faster switching back and forth. This addition should bring Ultraviolet digital copies to Google’s TV service, although the support page notes users will have to login to Vudu separately on each set-top box. That is, assuming they’re lucky enough to live in a place where Google Fiber is available.

Filed under: Home Entertainment, HD, Mobile, Google

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Source: Google Play, Google Fiber Support

Vudu’s player for Android launched last year with tablet support, and now a new update lets it work on a limited selection of phones. Newer Samsung handsets, the Nexus 4, HTC One and several other devices round out the list, as the app works for either streaming or downloading movies. It worked without issue on our Nexus 4, however since its UI hasn’t changed from the tablet version some of the buttons were smaller than we’d like. Also, we couldn’t get the video to play in any res beyond SD so it wasn’t the sharpest, but there was a high enough bitrate to make movie-watching enjoyable on the small screen. As usual, the app is free, if you have an account with the VOD / Ultraviolet service hit the Play Store link below to see if works on your hardware of choice.

Filed under: Home Entertainment, HD, Mobile

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Source: Google Play, Vudu Blog

It took some time to work out most of the bugs, but Vudu is finally expanding its beta of its home-based disc-to-digital service. The idea and the price are still the same as when the private beta launched, but what’s new is support for OS X, plus an improved user experience and disc identification powered by Gracenote. We gave it a try and found the process couldn’t be any easier or more straight forward. To get others to try it out, Vudu is giving away the first conversion on the house and if you’re willing to convert ten or more movies then you’ll get a 50 percent discount. After converting a DVD to HDX we were instantly able to turn around and start watching it, far faster than any disc ripping software we’ve used. Add in the newfound ability to download movies to iOS and Android devices and UltraViolet is really shaping up — though we’re still waiting for that common file format to move copies between devices easily and single sign-on to fix the login mess.

Filed under: Home Entertainment, HD

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Source: Vudu Blog, Vudu.com