Tag Archives: Digital Movies

The cloud hits movies…

To say the least, I’m a big movie fan.  I quickly jumped on the laserdisc “revolution” when I was absolutely blown away with the images and letterboxed presentation of Blade Runner.  I amassed quite a collection of laserdiscs only to turn around and discard them all with the arrival and realization of how much better DVDs were.

Again, I amassed quite a large collection of DVDs but shifted over to BluRays and their promise of an even better picture and sound quality.  Since, I’ve yet again amassed a large collection of films, some of which I’ve bought multiple copies.

That ended a couple of weeks ago, for the most part.

As the topic of this blog entry notes, I’ve (finally) discovered the joys of UV copies of films and, even better, the VUDU services.

I know there must be many like me out there, hesitant to give up physical copies of your movies and doubtful regarding the UV/cloud services for the same.

Don’t be.

The switch came when I started investigating the whole “free Digital Copy” tag on several of the movies I’d purchased.  I had the Flixster app on my tablet/computer/smartphone but mostly used it to figure out theater movie times and ratings.  Then, out of curiosity, I took a recently purchased BluRay (True Detective Season One, for those interested) and checked the whole UV thing out.  After seeing what the service was like, I was hooked.

I went through all my recent BluRay purchases and found all the ones that offered UV copies and plopped the films onto my account.  The results were breathtaking: Instead of facing cluttered shelves worth of films, I could look up what I had easily and play it with the tap of a button.  Sure, the bonus material on many of the movies were absent, but I still had the physical copies and the movie itself was the important thing, right?

Then, a couple of weeks ago, I spotted the Digital Copy of Mad Max: Fury Road available at Costco a full three or so weeks before the physical BluRay/DVDs were to be released.  Frankly, I couldn’t wait.  I broke down and bought the Digital Copy, thinking all I’d get is the movie itself minus the bonus material.  I figured one day soon I’d buy the BluRay and see the material then.

I was wrong.

The Digital Copy included all the bonus material and that, my friends, was that.

I was a full convert to the Movies-On-The-Cloud ideal.

From that moment on, I decided whatever new feature I wanted to buy I’d first check out its Digital version.  The less clutter in my house, the better.

But then, purely by accident, I discovered VUDU.

While trying to see the Digital Copies of my films, I tried to see if my SmartTV had a Flixster app.  It didn’t.  But it did have VUDU, a service I was at that moment completely unfamiliar with.

I did some investigating and discovered what amounts to the Holy Grail of Digital Movie apps.  With VUDU, your computer becomes a Digital Movie making machine.  You take your physical copies of movies, be they BluRay or DVD, pop them into your player and the VUDU app will determine what the film is and offer to get you a Digital Copy of the same for the very minimal price of $2 for each BluRay and $5 to convert DVDs into HD Digital Copies.  You also pay less if you go with the Standard Definition images and 50% less if you convert 10 movies at a time.

So I spent the past weekend converting nearly 200 of my films to Digital and I couldn’t be happier.  Some of the films were only available in SD versions but for the most part they looked pretty nice with the one big exception being the Digital copy of Outland (until the HD version is available, I’d stay away).

There were a couple of other problems:  Some movies the VUDU app could not “read” and I’m not sure why (I have the Alfred Hitchcock boxed set and some of the movies were recognized while others were not).  Still other films the VUDU app recognizes but these films, unfortunately, are currently not available as UV copies.

Despite this, I managed to make a HUGE amount of my films available to me at the click of a button and across many different machines.  Yes, I can see these UV films from my Smartphone, Tablet, TV, or Computer instead of exclusively relying on my BluRay player.

I’m late to this particular party but its a glorious thing to now be a part of.

If you’re like me and you love your movies and haven’t thought about going the Digital route, do so.  You’ll thank me for it!