Our take...
The land grab for services embedded into consumer electronics (CE) devices is now in full swing and the market is becoming increasingly fragmented. While the rise of services delivered directly to the TV is a pre-requisite for widespread adoption, the current situation means that consumers run the risk of being swamped by a plethora of widgets many offering near identical functionality and catalogue as Amazon, Vudu, CinemaNow and Blockbuster (powered by a white-labelled CinemaNow), all compete to establish themselves as the first run movie service of choice.

While Vudu and CinemaNow are attempting to differentiate themselves (with Vudu selling HD movies from Disney and CinemaNow announcing 3D), what is really emerging, at least for the moment, is an increasingly crowded market with no killer app to help sway the balance in favour of one provider or another. This announcement from Vudu is a case in point. It marks a significant extension of Vudu's embedded platforms and solidifies the company's position in the face of competition from both Sonic Solution's CinemaNow and Amazon for video services and Yahoo's Widget Engine for information and interface:

• On the video front Vudu has now leapfrogged CinemaNow in terms of publically-announced major partners. In contrast to Vudu's seven major TV manufacturers the Sonic subsidiary has confirmed CE deals in place with LG, Funai (Philips) and, as of CES, Toshiba, in addition to its ability to leverage its integration with the Yahoo Widget Engine (for a further three manufacturers).
• For the interface, both the Vudu Apps and the Yahoo! Widget Engine can co-exist as platforms on the same device, but the duplication of applications such as Twitter, Picasa, Facebook and Flickr make it unlikely that manufacturers will provide both to customers in the long term. Consequently Toshiba's adoption of Vudu is particularly interesting. The company was using Yahoo! on one of its Blu-ray players, but Screen Digest understands it has effectively jumped ship. LG and Samsung provide the Vudu movie streaming but remain with Yahoo! for widgets. This means Yahoo! and Vudu are evenly matched with four announced major manufacturers each. However, the web giant is likely to see wider deployment this year on the back of its deal with Vizio, the number one TV manufacturer in the US.

But in many respects a more interesting comparison is with Netflix whose Watch Instantly service is now available from a larger number of partners through a wider range of devices, notably the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. Screen Digest believes that, at least for the short term, this breadth of availability (circumventing long TV replacement cycles), coupled with a well-known service which is free to existing Netflix subscribers, will result in Netflix seeing much higher usage from consumers.