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Jazzper Isaksson
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Voddler - a first look

Voddler is said to be the Spotify of movies, a comparisson that could be true if they could deliver the same quality. We love Spotify and everything about it, but it is hard to love Voddler and yes, I do know that Voddler is in private beta. Today a private beta tag really means little. When you slip out of alpha you should have a product that is more of a release candidate than an alpha and what I have seen so far, there are many things left for Voddler to do in order to be what they want to be. Who knows, this might be the closest to the public product they will get and if that's the case, I wouldn't put my pennies on Voddler.


After registering you get to download a desktop client. This client fills your entire screen and there seems to be no way of having it windowed why I can't take any nifty screenshots. Secondly the client can only be controlled by using keyboard, which is a bit annoying. I so want to use my mouse to point at links, but no. In order to start the client you need to have a little program running in the background which apparently keeps you logged in. If you close this, you won't be able to login with your client.

The client itself is ugly as pie and controlling it with your keyboard arrows, is a bit of a hustle. The menu is set at the top of the screen and from here you can access categories and genres. Once you have found a movie of your liking, click play and off you go. The movie instantly starts and fills your screen and that's the way you need to watch it. No option of controlling window size apart from the Settings menu where you can customize the video size-wise. But only the video size, not the window. This is a bit dodgy and I suggest you leave this alone. 

So, what about the movies then? Well, it can't be compared to Spotify in any way. At the moment you have no more than let's say, 50-60 movies to chose from and they all are pretty much playing in the b-movie category. Not too long ago Swedish newspapers discovered that Voddler actually didn't have any contracts and deals made with the movie companies which was quite strange. Especially when bearing in mind that they are hoping for a public release before Christmas. Not to worry, Voddler says. Sorry, guys, I do worry. Promising something that you might have to take back would be quite bad for you. If you don't close those deals soon, you won't have much to offer, it's as simple as that. 

But if you get your kicks from watching movies like "Day of the dead" and "The Crow" you will probably find more interesting titles. I found the French excellent scare "Martyrs" and enjoyed watching it again on my little 19 incher and there are a couple of more quality movies to watch. As far as video and audio quality I would say it's okay. It's okay to watch on a computer screen and with desktop speakers (good ones). I haven't tried it on a tv set yet, but I would think it's not enough. I tried it on my netbook as well and it was choppy but it worked, which is good. 

Final conclusion would be that Voddler is aiming high but they are far from "there". Despite this being a beta version, they would have a lot to work on before they can go public. I can forgive them for ugly UI and the keyboard controlling, but I wouldn't forgive them for having a library of crappy b-movies. If they want to survive, and enjoy future comparisons with Spotify, they need to extend that library with quality titles. If not, it will be a fail. 
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