Nothing but Good News for UV (1 Viewer)

[Patrick Donahue]

(Always dreamed of having one of those combination home-theater dens and wall-to-wall manor libraries...Decorated in early theater-lobby, with a popcorn machine.)

I'm with ya brother

 

[Chris Will]

I have also been an a long time Apple user, but made the decision early on that any purchase I made would be through the studio's official services UV and DMA. Apple TV is by far my favorite device for ease of use but for movies I simply switch inputs on the TV to the Roku (I don't watch 2 hour movies every day, after all). With the Vudu app my collection is easily available on all my iOS devices.

Thanks for the post, your life of thinking makes since.

I do have a question about the bold part. So, is not every purchase made on Vudu also UV compatible? If not, can you tell while browsing the Vudu store what is UV (I know Disney titles are not)? I'd hate to have to create accounts at multiple official Studio stores just to make sure I was getting UV titles. Also, if you buy a movie from another UV source do you get the extras in Vudu as well? I know I have never gotten the extras on Vudu when redeeming UV codes from BDs.

 

[Patrick Donahue]

What I mean by buying through the studios official services is that I don't like buying through iTunes or Amazon. I just feel like UV and DMA offer the most "protection" of my purchases.

When browsing Vudu you see either the UV or DMA logos. Now not EVERYTHING falls under those categories (a big one being Indiana Jones) but most will be either one, yes. I honestly don't know your question about extras as I never pay attention to those

 

[Joshua Clinard]

You do not need to buy a title through a studio operated storefront to get UltraViolet rights for a title. If a title is offered with UV right, you will get it with your VUDU purchase in almost all cases. There are a very small number of titles that do not come with UV rights right away, but they are usually added later. I buy and redeem all my titles directly from VUDU. Most of the studios that support UV offer it for almost all of their titles, with very few exceptions. Lionsgate has many titles that aren't UV, but the other studio's support it for most every title that's available digitally. MGM is one studio that supports it on about 4% of its titles, but that should increase as time goes by.

 

[Sam Posten]

Also, UV is still somewhat of a beta, new features, content, and streaming/download providers will be added.

LMAO, still with this?

 

[Chris Will]

Now I wish I had a BD drive on one of my computers, the disc to digital program looks like a pretty good deal, especially if you do 10 or more at a time.


The only other thing that concerns me about Vudu is the thread over on blu-ray.com that list the movies that are not in OAR. The list is huge compared to the number of movies available on Vudu but there are a few I'd like to have but, not cropped. Batman Begins, Raiders of the Lost Ark and Temple of Doom 3 that jump out on that list. Now, I have those BDs so it not a huge deal but, I just assumed that if a movie was on BD that the digital version would be from the same transfer. Guess that is not the really the case. Moving forward, it would bug me if I bought a new release digitally only to find out that it is cropped but, the BD is not.


Can't believe they cropped the Indiana Jones movies!


Anyway, I'm probably going to give the digital route a try for a few months and see how I like it, at least with UV and DMA supported titles.

 

[ChristopherG]

I don't see me ever getting on the UV bandwagon. The two times I've tried to redeem codes they both have expired - WTF? I'm sorry that I actually have things to do that might keep me from dicking around with my UV code redemption in what the studios guess is a reasonable amount of time, but in both cases I missed out by weeks, but I seriously don't get why they expire and since they do I am going to just pass. I love digital streaming and having a digital library is fantastic - I guess I'll just keep going with my current method and pass on UV.

 

[Patrick Donahue]

Now I wish I had a BD drive on one of my computers, the disc to digital program looks like a pretty good deal, especially if you do 10 or more at a time.

The only other thing that concerns me about Vudu is the thread over on blu-ray.com that list the movies that are not in OAR. The list is huge compared to the number of movies available on Vudu but there are a few I'd like to have but, not cropped. Batman Begins, Raiders of the Lost Ark and Temple of Doom 3 that jump out on that list. Now, I have those BDs so it not a huge deal but, I just assumed that if a movie was on BD that the digital version would be from the same transfer. Guess that is not the really the case. Moving forward, it would bug me if I bought a new release digitally only to find out that it is cropped but, the BD is not.

Can't believe they cropped the Indiana Jones movies!

Anyway, I'm probably going to give the digital route a try for a few months and see how I like it, at least with UV and DMA supported titles.

There are forums over at Vudu.com where Vudu employees actually post most days and when customers post problems on titles they are very fast at correcting them. I know last fall I posted that Godzilla had a terribly washed out picture and they put a new encode up within a week. That's great service. Having said that, they also have a list of movies that are not OAR and they haven't really been addressed, the reason given that they can only work with what the studios give them.

It's also worth noting that things like Indiana Jones being cropped are also present in the copies found in iTunes as well.

 

[Chris Will]

Think I've decided that Vudu/UV is not something I'm going to use for older movies. New release going forward, probably, but not things 10+ years old. I've been looking at many older movies on Vudu and watching 2 minute previews. My biggest disappointment was how many are just stereo sound, this is just unacceptable to me. Things like The Matrix, a few of the Star Trek movies, Terminator 2 director's cut just to name a few that only have stereo sound. There are many more as well. Now I'm not so worried about trying to get a BD drive to do the D2D thing because I would never watch them with only stereo sound. Obviously this isn't a huge deal since I have the BD for most of these movies but, it lessens the chance that I may use the D2D program to convert my BDs collection to a digital collection.

 

[Patrick Donahue]

This post from a Vudu engineer of their forum might be of interest...

"While I am in complete agreement that where available movies should have the 5.1 soundtrack (and I also try to report movies that don't when I see them), discrete digital sound only started in 1992 (Batman Returns, for the movie trivia buffs). Before that matrix encoding (Dolby Surround, Dolby Pro Logic) was used for surround in theaters (encoding multiple channels in the stereo analog signal).

So, even when the DVD/BD says it's 5.1 it doesn't mean you are really getting anything more than the 2.0 encoding has. Some movies before that time have had the audio remastered from multichannel sources, some just converted to 5.1 from the matrix encoding, and many older movies (the majority before the late 70's) were probably just stereo or even mono anyway.

Most of the more recent movies that are marked "2.0" are in fact Dolby Pro Logic encoded - so while they are not discrete 5.1 they are most definitely surround, and all surround receivers should be able to process them."

FWIW - my receiver plays anything marked as stereo in surround and they sound just fine. Obviously not ideal, though.

 

[Chris Will]

That makes sense but, I wish they'd upgrade the Matrix trilogy.


I have another questions, if I should start another thread just let me know but, a few of you have been good at responding here. I was about to pre-order Mockingjay Part 1 on Vudu, which comes out digitally on Tuesday but, it is not listed as supporting UV. The other 2 Hunger Games movies do support UV so, did Lionsgate drop UV, or is the logo not added until the day it is released?

 

[Patrick Donahue]

With Vudu it's common for it to not go UV until even a day or two after release. One way to make sure if you are worried about a specific title is to see if UV comes with the Blu-ray.

 

[Chris Will]

So, if you buy something that later goes UV, do you always get the UV rights (at Vudu specifically)?

 

[satam55]

So, if you buy something that later goes UV, do you always get the UV rights (at Vudu specifically)?

Yes.