All through April, we’ve been comparing video-on-demand services to find the best match for our readers. This time, the Netflix juggernaut is pitted against Walmart’s Vudu service, which offers an impressively technical picture quality. Netflix has its problems with the streaming service, not least is the buffering, and it’s available in 1080p via your game console, but can Vudu’s own digital conversion convince FilmBuffs to switch over?

Formerly a set-top box company, the Walmart-owned Vudu has been concentrating on its VOD services recently. It has some impressive technical features regarding film quality, but is it worth the price of a rental?

Price: The pay-on-demand service is around 99 cents to $5.99 for a one-time rental, depending on whether you’re renting in SD, HD or HDX (which we’ll come back to) and special promotions.

Selection: A solid selection of major movie releases and quite recent, too. Movies are generally released on the same day as the DVD, as opposed to Netflix’s 28-day delay. There’s a lot of TV on here, as well, and they offer the pilot episode of the long-awaited (for, ahem, certain people) The Legend of Korra ahead of its release. Vudu also offers some indie movies while they’re still in theaters, although the rental cost for these is usually a little higher.

Ease-of-Use: There are a few search functions available, such as genre-tagging, by director name or by actor, and the results turn up in an interface similar to IMDB’s. Vudu also sorts movies into themed collections, like a more generic version of those you see on FilmBuff. Plus, there’s actually a FilmBuff collection.

Devices: Vudu is available on the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and pretty much every standard Blu-ray players and HDTVs (if you’re not using something you bought at a shady Chinese market), and the web interface is standardized for tablets.

X Factor: Vudu’s proprietary HDX format can do a whole bunch of things: primarily it offers Blu-ray-like HD picture quality over a broadband connection. It’s not quite as good as Blu-ray, but it does a whole lot of interesting things, such as processing contrast values in real-time to eliminate noise and preserving original film grain in a way most digital conversions won’t. Vudu’s commitment to how a film not only looks but feels is impressive. It is, however, the most expensive format in which to rent movies.

Netflix is the leading VOD service in the United States. Alongside its VOD services, Netflix is also a DVD distribution service that works on a mailing system. Lately, the pricing is complicated. You already know this from our previous post on Netflix.

Price: $7.99 for unlimited streaming and another $7.99 for unlimited DVDs to your house, plus an extra $2 for Blu-ray discs.

Selection: An estimated 17,000 titles are available for streaming. There’s a lot of good stuff and a lot of not-so-good. There’s a wide range of older movies and TV shows that you can’t find on other VOD services, so on selection alone, Netflix probably beats Vudu.

Ease-of-Use: In theory, all you need is an Internet connection. The recommendation service leaves a lot to be desired (someone should make a Tumblr blog out of their hilarious categorization errors, if that’s not already a thing).

Devices: Windows and Mac computers, iPhone, iPad, Windows 7 phones, Roku, TiVo, the new Apple TV, Google TV, PS3, Xbox 360, Nintendo Wii, HDTV sets and Blu-ray players.

X Factor: Netflix stores a petabyte of data on its servers, which includes master copies of movies from studios encoded into 50 different versions, each based on video and audio quality. It’s not quite as technically amazing as Vudu’s HDX conversion, but the sheer scale of it is awe-inspiring.

WINNER

Both services have their ups and downs, but in terms of picture quality, Vudu is unrivalled.

But with VOD, the question is “how good does my Internet connection need to be?” and the answer for Netflix is a measly 500 kilobytes per second, minimum. Compare that with a whole megabyte for Vudu’s SD service. We don’t even want to think about what you’d need for their HDX format (a quick Google search tells us it’s 4.5Mbps). ‘Buffs need to ask themselves whether it’s worth paying their providers through the nose for the experience.