Pandora coming to Vudu, LAN streaming too
By Nilay Patel 
posted March 16th 2009 12:56PM
posted March 16th 2009 12:56PM
Update: Full release is now after the break.
VUDU Introduces Pandora, First Music Application for VUDU
Latest Major Application Built on the VUDU RIA Platform Enables VUDU Owners to Bring Truly Personalized Radio to their Televisions and Home Theaters For Free
Santa Clara, CA, March 16, 2009 – VUDU, a leading provider of digital on-demand entertainment products and services, announced today that VUDU owners can get immediate access to Pandora's free, personalized Internet radio service on VUDU. Pandora represents VUDU's first music application for its growing RIA (Rich Internet Application) platform. Pandora joins YouTube, Flickr, Picasa and a selection of more than 120 channels of web based video content available to VUDU owners in their living rooms for free.
"As we continue to expand our RIA platform, we look forward to bringing many more popular services like Pandora to the VUDU Service," said Edward Lichty, Executive Vice President of Strategy and Content. "Our open development environment allows us to easily release new applications in partnership with some of today's most popular services and content delivery platforms, increasing the value of the VUDU service platform for our users and partners."
"Pandora is committed to enabling our listeners to enjoy their Pandora stations in all the places they listen to music; at home, at work or on the go," said Tim Westergren, Founder of Pandora. "We were impressed with VUDU's speed and the quality of development and think that VUDU is a great way for our listeners to access their favorite Pandora stations in the comfort of their living room."
VUDU customers can now experience Pandora on their televisions with all of the functionality that has made Pandora the leader in Internet radio. Using VUDU's award winning remote control, VUDU customers can create new stations and personalize them by adding new variety to the station and "thumbing" songs up and down as they play. Additionally, Pandora on VUDU supports multiple accounts enabling every member of the family to play his or her own personalized Pandora stations.
Pandora (www.pandora.com) is a free, personalized Internet radio service based on the Music Genome Project, which began in 2000 and is the most thorough analysis of popular music ever undertaken. Each song in the massive collection, which includes Pop, Rock, Jazz, Electronica, Hip Hop, Country, Blues, R&B, Latin and Classical, is analyzed and assessed against up to 400 distinct musical attributes (encompassing melody, harmony, rhythm, etc.) to capture its unique musical identity. Pandora uses this information to build playlists based on musical similarity. By entering a favorite song or artist, a listener is instantly launched into a personalized listening experience. Listeners can create up to 100 of these personal radio stations and refine them by providing thumbs up or thumbs down feedback.
Introduced in late 2008, VUDU's RIA is a standards-based platform that makes Web-hosted rich applications and services easily accessible through the VUDU Labs area of the VUDU service. Consumers can now use the VUDU remote control to access their favorite Internet content in their living rooms, optimized for display on their HDTVs. Combining the openness and ease of development of Web applications and a lean-back user experience optimized for television, VUDU RIA will be opening to developers later in 2009.
Tobias Fünke: [reading a script with terrible acting] "I don't know what you heard about me, but I'm a different kind of cop. I'm from the streets, and I'm the last cop you'll ever want to mess with in a darkened al - dark alley
[drops the act]
I'm still dreaming of a good Pandora Windows Media Center app with a 10 foot interface. One that would work through extenders like the Xbox as well.
There was a hacked together version I found a couple of years ago that was of limited functionality and had almost no remote control hooks IIRC.
This can't be that hard. I emailed them a long time ago and they replied: "That's a popular suggestion. I am happy to say that we hope to support that in the future." That was two years ago February :)
Err. Wasn't done.
It's great that Vudu gets this, but I suspect that it would get at least as much usage via the VMC/extenders. I wonder what the Vudu install base is?
And yet still no Android app. Jeez. Last.fm is no substitute.
I heard about the pandora but never used it. Seems like it is best time to start
Pandora is a phenomenal program and helped me find a lot of really cool music. I shed a tear when they stopped broadcasting to Canada (as an aside, does anyone know how to get it working in Canada?)
And, I'm sad to say, I lol'd at theNewbieOne.
Dammit, release an international service!
dammit, simplify comlplex and expensive US licensing fees!
Seriously though, we need a rewrite of the whole system that allows more freedom and modern day thinking. There should be fair use for things such as pandora; it's reduced quality, it's not on demand (a specific song) or stored locally, and it's pretty much exactly like the radio, but without awful amounts of ads. There should be a total % of profit fee model, not per song; there's no way in hell services like pandora can afford to continue in their current form if we don't force the greedy bureaucrats in the music industry to chill out.
Everyone is commenting on the Pandora app, and that's great and all... but, the item that really got my attention was the potential to play media stored remotely on a computer. If they implement those features correctly, then we're looking at another great alternative to the Popcorn Hour.. and it's cheaper! :)
But, they'll need to update the HDMI, provide awesome video codec support, and allow full support of HD Audio pass-through for DTS HD-HR, DTS HD-MA, Dolby Digital Plus and Dolby TrueHD.
Sounds promising though...
Where does that release say anything about LAN streaming? Will this be in a future update or is it added with the Pandora update? If I could use this thing as a DLNA media extender it would be hard to find a reason not to buy it for $149.
I don't believe LAN streaming is available in this update. Pandora is a really cool to have in the living room though. Especially when the only other option is a radio or a radio stream from cable. Pandora is better than both of those options.
Also, great to see VUDU is putting to use the RIA they introduced. The box keeps expanding.
Pandora is for losers that want to hear mainstream tracks picked by high school students. Please use Last.fm if you really want to discover good music and listen to something fresh. Perhaps learn of PureVolume as well.