My favorite toy as a kid was a Winnie the Pooh bear that talked when you pulled a string. I remember getting him one year at Christmas - I must have been 3 or 4. I loved him tons, but lost him at a campground one summer. Life was never the same since! :-( It was and still is the favorite toy I had.

Kewl! I'm going to win.

As usual the Engadget wanna be journalist hacks get it wrong. You guys never learn do you.

Dude, I was alpha testing the box last February when it came to me as a Plexiglass prototype. Other than the improvement in the graphics and some sanding of rough edges, the interface is very much the same as it was. It has changed VERY little. We've given a lot of feedback on the UI and it has changed as we've indicated where it needs to change, but they have been somewhat minor. It was not a completely different UI as you claim.

Gian, what Vudu box were you looking at 6 months ago? I've been a tester of the interface for over a year now and it has changed very little. I think you have the Vudu confused with something else. Please, don't talk about matters you know nothing about. The interface on the Vudu is the same now as it was before launch. You just don't know what you speak of and it shows.

Second, Vudu's price point is NOT too high. The AppleTV sells for $229 but with an 80 Gig hard drive. Vudu sells for $295 with a 250 Gig hard drive. The storage space on AppleTV is woefully small. Yes, I do own both as well. Vudu blows the ATV away. I bought my ATV last January right after they were announced. My prototype Vudu in the plexiglass box arrived first as Apple couldn't meet their ship date. I can take pictures if you like.

Apple's navigation features during a movie are so bad it's nearly criminal. There's just about no way to skip back 5 or 10 seconds to hear missed dialog. It's certainly not easy to do. And I get so tired of an extremely tedious buried menu structure. It's fine on an ipod, where I have a scroll wheel to zip through things but the model does not work well on a video viewing device.

And don't even get me started on the photo viewing aspects of the iPod. Gee, I can synch iPhoto albums or events. But I can't select what events I want - I have to take them all. And WFT about not being able to browse the photo library or view meta data on screen or zoom in on the photos or rotate them....

Vudu's HD quality is officially stated to be "Broadcast Quality." Vudu does not pretend that the quality is as good as BluRay or HD-DVD. But the video quality of HD titles is definitely better than the SD titles. There is more color depth and the image is sharper. As good as physical High-Def DVDs? No. More convenient and pretty darn good? Yes. Is it going to get better? Yes.

And people complain about Vudu's price tag with a 250 Gig hard drive and it plays video when all this does is play audio!

VUDU! VUDU! VUDU!

Those who scoff at the Vudu don't understand it or just simply like to go on viewing movies via pieces of plastic.

I've had the privilege of being involved with the Vudu box for about 6 months now. I've seen this thing evolve and I am tremendously impressed. The video quality is truly AS GOOD OR BETTER than DVDs and is definitely better than cable or satellite. That said, I'll add a caveat: The video quality is as good as the source material received from the studios. Some movies have lousy source material. Others, like 300, which was a direct digital transfer are simply amazing on this box.

Where else can you go to rent or purchase 5000 movies instantaneously? And it IS instantaneous. It leaves all other OnDemand services in the dust. It will change the way you rent and possibly purchase movies.

Yes, it is a bummer that there is no content portability. And that will deter purchases of movies. However, it's not a fault of the box or Vudu. At present the studios have mandated that movies stay on the box and on the box only. Hopefully this will change over time and if content is licensed to be played on other devices, then I would expect this to be supported pretty quickly. The studios do a lot of strange things in regard to this box that hopefully will change (some movies can be purchased but not rented, others rented but not purchased, etc.). Still, it's worth purchasing the box if you like movies but hate going to the video store, hate your cable's on demand selection or hate waiting for mail from Netflix. I plan on using my box as my primary movie delivery service.

Vudu is a company that is very receptive to our requests and demands as customers. They want customer feedback and will take everything seriously. I know this because I have seen it happen with requests I have made. They are VERY responsive. So now, when this product is new, you have a chance to influence it. Come over and visit http://forum.vudu.com for more info.

And for the record, I am not a Vudu employee nor paid by them. I've just been involved with the box since last March.

Jon