Walmart Will Convert Your DVDs, Blu-rays to UltraViolet

[drwho1]

I'm with everyone here. This is a stupid idea.... ehy would anyone want to pay more money for something that they already paid for, something that they already own...

Plus like others said: You can do it yourself! for Free!
well as long as you have a computer and necessary Free software, and if you are reading this then you probably already do.

 

[gtvr]

Possible loophole - if I pay $2 to convert my DVD to UV, then give it to my friend & he takes it in, will they know that DVD has already been converted? Or could 100 people get copies for $2? I know this is illegal, but would they have a tracking mechanism?

 

[Crush3d]

Here's what we will do for you:

-We will give you "permanent rental" of "your" movie. Don't forget it's a rental so no one else can borrow it or have it!

-We will arbitrarily decide at some point in the future to charge you for our streaming service or find some other way of milking money out of you. (I'd place bets on advertisements/commercials before/after/during the movie)

-We will laugh at you when you try to watch "your" HD movies on your 4G Android phone/tablet or iPhone/iPad. By the way you have a 2GB monthly limit.. enjoy getting reemed.


No thanks, I'll pass.

 

[zaznet]

[citation][nom]gtvr[/nom]Possible loophole - if I pay $2 to convert my DVD to UV, then give it to my friend & he takes it in, will they know that DVD has already been converted? Or could 100 people get copies for $2? I know this is illegal, but would they have a tracking mechanism?[/citation]

That is probably where any value will come in right away. Borrow that collection of Disney movies your friend has so you can have it added to your UltraViolet collection and get them all for $2 each. Consumers may jump on this opportunity and in the short term it's not bad for the movie industry or UltraViolet.

Currently you get the disc back so you return it to your friend unaltered and he is still able to do the same thing next week if he wants to. At some point they will require you to leave the disks with Walmart to prevent this. Right now they gain $2 for a movie you could just borrow (for free) so they still win even if the consumer is stealing from them in this manner.

This reminds me of the Divx vs DVD battles where Circuit City would sell Divx discs and players that required Internet access to ensure DRM authentication. You could buy a new movie for much cheaper than DVD but only watch it a couple of times before you had to pay another fee to watch it again.

Removing the physical media is the end goal which reduces the ability to copy and lend to friends which helps ensure a paid viewing.

 

[wiyosaya]

No thanks. I'll keep my BR's on BR. I don't watch them anywhere else.

 

[wiyosaya]

[citation][nom]zaznet[/nom]This reminds me of the Divx vs DVD battles where Circuit City would sell Divx discs and players that required Internet access to ensure DRM authentication. You could buy a new movie for much cheaper than DVD but only watch it a couple of times before you had to pay another fee to watch it again.Removing the physical media is the end goal which reduces the ability to copy and lend to friends which helps ensure a paid viewing.[/citation]
Speculation: This probably led to the demise of Circuit City since they lost something like $200 M on the venture.

IMHO, there's something going on at Wal-Mart. My bet is that the picture is not as rosy as Wal-Mart paints it to be. If you are a base member at Sam's Club, they pester you every time you buy something there to upgrade to what may be a useless level of membership for $60 more / yr. To me, that says Sam's Club is looking to membership fees for revenue / profit instead of making it on sales - so, my bet is that Wal-Mart, in general, is not doing so well and is looking for other areas where they can siphon money out of their prey, uh, I mean customers.

 

[zaznet]

[citation][nom]wiyosaya[/nom] *SNIP* my bet is that Wal-Mart, in general, is not doing so well and is looking for other areas where they can siphon money out of their prey, uh, I mean customers.[/citation]

Not sure that Wal-Mart has to be declining in sales to seek more places to make money. Dislike them all you want but they will look for every penny they can pinch no matter how well they are doing.

As for your take on Circuit City that was just one miss-step of many they made. Yes it cost them a lot to go into that losing battle against DVD. UltraViolet seems to have learned from that mistake and isn't currently working to supplant physical disks with this sort of move.

Time is not on their side as there are a lot of companies jumping into this market right now. Competition is heating up and it's way too early to tell who will be the front-runner in the next couple of months or next year at this rate.

 

[jaber2]

I watched my LOTR regular and expanded few times already, it's running on few HD channels once in a while, I also have a box full of other movies and specials I purchased through the years, but now I don't see any reason at all why I should save or convert them, whats the point, you've already seen ...

 

[cirdecus]

I'm confused... I was under the impression that DVD video was 720p and that the content was pre-recorded onto the disc to play this way. I wasn't aware that the DVD media itself controlled the content of the video.

So by converting from your DVD movie to blu-ray or whatever, I guess this means that they magically transform the content stored on the disc?

I can put a mpeg video on a bluray disc.. it doesn't mean its going to suddenly transform into HD..

Is there something I'm missing or are they deceiving consumers into thinking that the type of media that stores the content actually determines the quality of the content?

 

[zaznet]

[citation][nom]Cirdecus[/nom]So by converting from your DVD movie to blu-ray or whatever, I guess this means that they magically transform the content stored on the disc?[/citation]

You don't understand the service being provided. WalMart is not going to convert the disc to a file then upload that file. They are going to confirm you possess a physical copy and then unlock the existing digital copy on your VUDU account. The process should be a straight forward scan the bar code then hand the case back to you.

Also the playback quality of DVD is 480p with BluRay being 1080p. The physical media of a DVD could hold a 720p or 1080p video file it just wold be shorter in length and isn't supported as part of the DVD format standard so few if any home DVD players could play it.

 

[Guest]

TBH this isnt as terrible of a service as people are making it out to be. I have a VuDu enabled blu-ray player and rent movies in their "HDX" format all the time. They get all the new releases, some even for movies still in theater. Their HDX format looks very nice, and almost as good as native blu-ray. It's also incredibly fast. I can stream over my puny 6mb DSL line in about 3 seconds of clicking play, with absolutely no re-buffering or quality issues at all. I have to give them 5 stars for reliability.

Now think about ripping your own bluray movies yourself. For starters you need to have a blu-ray drive for your pc. Then you need to have the storage space to do it. Then comes the time to actually rip. Then comes the technical knowhow to stream to your home theater, or watch on your computer screen if you enjoy sitting in an office chair.

For 2 bucks, to have your movies stored in the cloud with a reliable company like VuDu isnt that bad at all.

 

[pedro_mann]

Does Vudu still block hi-def streaming to PC's, if so it is a show stopper. You know, they won't trust me not to rip my movie when it is streamed off the internet when I can rip it directly from the disc itself. So pretty much their DRM is stifling me from actually paying for this service even though it sounds interesting to me. Looks like they are leaving HTPC owners out in the dust.

 

[loomis86]

If they ever invent an optical drive that utilizes an ultraviolet laser, this is going to get really confusing to regular people.

 

[loomis86]

When do they start letting me convert my extensive VHS movie collection to UltraViolet?

 

[wildkitten]

[citation][nom]lolvudu[/nom]TBH this isnt as terrible of a service as people are making it out to be. I have a VuDu enabled blu-ray player and rent movies in their "HDX" format all the time. They get all the new releases, some even for movies still in theater. Their HDX format looks very nice, and almost as good as native blu-ray. It's also incredibly fast. I can stream over my puny 6mb DSL line in about 3 seconds of clicking play, with absolutely no re-buffering or quality issues at all. I have to give them 5 stars for reliability. Now think about ripping your own bluray movies yourself. For starters you need to have a blu-ray drive for your pc. Then you need to have the storage space to do it. Then comes the time to actually rip. Then comes the technical knowhow to stream to your home theater, or watch on your computer screen if you enjoy sitting in an office chair. For 2 bucks, to have your movies stored in the cloud with a reliable company like VuDu isnt that bad at all.[/citation]
No, on the surface it isn't that bad. What is bad is digital copies had been being you go and download a wmv or mp4 file and then you could do whatever you wished to do with it.

What this is is more restrictive than what used to be, and that is why it is worse. It restricts personl freedom to do with what we want. Once again, legitimate consumers get the shaft instead of them trying to get the real pirates.

 

[rosen380]

I'm pretty sure the biggest benefit is that for $2 I can get legitimate 'access' to a 1080p version of 'The Pirates of the Caribbean' that I own on DVD without having to spend $15 on a bluRay disc.

Similar to the Apple music thing, where you "upload" your mp3s and you get nice higher quality versions [unless your collection is already high quality-- mine isn't... when I ripped most of my MP3s disk space was still too expensive for that ]

 

[wiyosaya]

[citation][nom]zaznet[/nom]As for your take on Circuit City that was just one miss-step of many they made. Yes it cost them a lot to go into that losing battle against DVD. UltraViolet seems to have learned from that mistake and isn't currently working to supplant physical disks with this sort of move.Time is not on their side as there are a lot of companies jumping into this market right now. Competition is heating up and it's way too early to tell who will be the front-runner in the next couple of months or next year at this rate.[/citation]
Circa 1999, $200 M was a very big amount. It is still a very big amount even now. No retailer can afford to lose that kind of money. Compounding mis-steps or not, I am still willing to bet that that was the first domino.

In my opinion, the competition in this market will amount to too many cooks spoiling the pot. Not every cook will survive.

 

[alextheblue]

[citation][nom]rosen380[/nom]I'm pretty sure the biggest benefit is that for $2 I can get legitimate 'access' to a 1080p version of 'The Pirates of the Caribbean' that I own on DVD without having to spend $15 on a bluRay disc.Similar to the Apple music thing, where you "upload" your mp3s and you get nice higher quality versions [unless your collection is already high quality-- mine isn't... when I ripped most of my MP3s disk space was still too expensive for that ][/citation]No, you have to read that part carefully. If you have the DVD version and you want DVD quality (presumably 480p standard def), it's $2. If you have the Blu-ray version and you want 1080p, it's $2. If you have the DVD, BUT you want your digital copy to be 1080p, you have to pay $5.

However, your point still stands. Instead of re-buying your movies in Blu-ray, you could get digital UV copies in 1080p for substantially less. Personally I like UV in concept quite a bit. It's simple enough that my parents could use it without any fuss. My only concern is what is going to happen to your UV movies in the long term? I'd need some kind of really solid reassurances to actually invest in any UV digital copies. Ideally UV would allow us to download and archive locally, for backup purposes and for conserving bandwidth in the long-term. I wouldn't even care if they were DRM'd, as long as the rights servers are maintained, you could still play any ones you've got local even if the main UV streaming servers were down/gone/you've hit your bandwidth caps.

 

[alidan]

[citation][nom]Cirdecus[/nom]I'm confused... I was under the impression that DVD video was 720p and that the content was pre-recorded onto the disc to play this way. I wasn't aware that the DVD media itself controlled the content of the video.So by converting from your DVD movie to blu-ray or whatever, I guess this means that they magically transform the content stored on the disc? I can put a mpeg video on a bluray disc.. it doesn't mean its going to suddenly transform into HD..Is there something I'm missing or are they deceiving consumers into thinking that the type of media that stores the content actually determines the quality of the content?[/citation]

there are many cases of dvd being higher quality than the blu ray version.

if they just move it from dvd, upscale it, than sell it, its worse quality usually.
if they are so lazy and cheap to just up scale it, they usualy want to milk it a bit, so lets remove the grain by useing a digital filter

so now you have a blured upscale movie, that in all likely hood looks better on dvd than bluray.

there are also cases of vhs being higher quality than dvd (especially the older vhses)

 

[techy74]

It sounds nice, but it is still hard to beat having the disc in your hand. You can play it regardless of your internet connection. Your to keep forever. No extra cost.

With HD Tv's, it's impossible to go past the availability and quality of Blu Ray. It will need to be something special to top Blu ray, small, compact and cheap.

Nice idea, but i think very few will watch mobile movies (small screen and low quality). Most will play games or internet.