CB - S2EP11 - UltraViolet Shutdown

Cinematic Brotastic Movie Podcast

One of the first cloud-based digital lockers for movies and TV shows is shutting down. How soon will this happen and what will become of your movies if you used the service? What lead to the shutdown and how easy is it to save your collection? The Brothers Brotastic dive right in to the digital content shutdown of UltraViolet.

UltraViolet is shutting down at the end of July. They announced the shutdown at the beginning of the year. Since then many have been clamoring to make sure they don’t lose their digital movies that they have saved over the years. So what must be done to save your collection from disappearing at the end of the summer? It seemingly is a simple fix, but if you’re not computer savvy, it could be a daunting task. You can click the following link to follow step by step instructions on how to save your library.

https://www.howtogeek.com/fyi/ultraviolet-is-shutting-down-on-july-31st-heres-how-to-transfer-your-movies/

We will also post this article to our Facebook Page as well.

There are many places to store digital copies of movies and tv shows, but the ones that we like and find easy to use are Vudu, and Movies Anywhere. In a nutshell, you link your UltraViolet account to Vudu, then link it to Movies Anywhere; simple, but can be difficult or confusing for less computer friendly people.

Personally the early days of digital content storage were confusing. We feel that this may have contributed to the downfall of UltraViolet. The ease of use of Movies Anywhere leaves UltraViolet in the dust. UltraViolet has a website, myuv.com, but this is not where you watch your movies. Instead, you have to link the account to another service such as Vudu or Movies Anywhere, or for a brief time Apps like Flixster. UltraViolet was just a storage location, and to be able to watch your movies, you often had to sign up for other services; sometimes even having to set up an account for each individual production company, I.e Sony, Lionsgate, Paramount, Disney etc… This made it confusing to keep up with growing digital libraries. With services like Movies Anywhere, all of your library is in one convenient location. And you can use the app or web site to watch those movies as well. You don’t have to set up multiple accounts. In fact, if you have multiple digital content libraries already, Movies Anywhere is a place where you can bring them all together, including iTunes. Now, we keep talking about Movie’s Anywhere, but only because it's a preferred choice, and not because they are sponsoring this podcast. It has made the navigation of the digital content catalog easy and efficient for us.

Now there are some production companies that do not support Movies Anywhere; Paramount, Lionsgate, and MGM for example. To have movies by those companies will require additional digital content lockers. Vudu is another big one. It can also be linked to Movies Anywhere. The nice thing about linking these accounts, is that with a lot of movies, the link goes both ways. iTunes movies will show up in Movies Anywhere, and Movies Anywhere titles can show up in iTunes.

There is still multiple accounts and services that sometimes feels convoluted and confusing, but it's getting better. We almost wonder if when UltraViolet shuts down, that perhaps some of those production companies that don’t support Movies Anywhere, will back the service since their ties to UltraViolet are severed. If this is the case, Movies Anywhere would be the closes thing to a one stop shop for purchased digital content.

Until next time, we’ll see you at the movies.

And don’t forget your ticket stubs.