Vudu is now a movie and TV rental and purchase store for the Oculus platform in the USA.
Movie rentals were already available on Oculus via FandangoNOW, but Fandango purchased Vudu from Walmart in August and merged the services together under the Vudu brand.
Vudu has recent, straight out of theatre movies like Free Guy, Jungle Cruise, F9, Black Widow, and hundreds of past titles. Rental prices start at $5.99. You watch the content on a window floating in front of you, there’s no virtual cinema environment.
FandangoNOW was one of the worst-reviewed apps on the Oculus Store, and some reviewers of the new Vudu app report choppy playback.
Unfortunately the app still only supports streaming, you can’t download content to watch offline. That means this isn’t suitable for watching on a plane or the typically slow WiFi on trains & hotels.
There’s also still no support for co-watching with friends, arguably the most compelling potential feature for apps of this kind. Apple will soon bring FaceTime co-watching to its devices, raising the prospect of its rumored upcoming headset leapfrogging Oculus in this use case.
It’s unclear whether Facebook plans to partner with other providers outside the US.
