Share Your Vudu Movies

vudu-dave

We’ve long pined for the day we could legitimately share our legally acquired digital content, similar to how we often recycle physical media, without piracy or loaning out HBO credentials as so many do. Well, the UltraViolet consortium, consisting of a large number of movie studios, obviously sees some value in keeping their customers happy — perhaps as a way to cut down on theft and grow their digital ecosystem. And Walmart’s Vudu is the first provider to implement their new licensing.

Share My Movies by Vudu allows us to grant access to our cloud-based video library to five others. And, instead of messing with passwords and the like, invites are handed out via email address – as similarly implemented on Slingbox. This makes me a whole heck of a lot more more likely to purchase Blu-rays (with digital copies), knowing I can have my mom tune into any worthy flicks via her Roku. As we saw with UltraViolet’s disc-to-digital initiative, I anticipate other UltraViolet services like Flixster and Target Ticket will eventually offer similar sharing capabilities.

13 thoughts on “Share Your Vudu Movies”

  1. Yeah, what’s interesting is that UltraViolet was the “powered by” behind the scenes tech but they’ve started launching services under their own brand/name essentially … the site “Beta” moniker is cute considering Vudu, Target, Flixster, CinemaNow, Sony are well beyond beta. But it’s probably been a source of confusion for some. (Will TiVo ever do UV?)

  2. I find that TiVo’s lacking of Vudu / UV is only second to lacking streaming Amazon. The combo of Netflix / Amazon / Vudu covers 99% of online content for me personally. Right now I switch to Xbox (360 or One) to watch anything other than Netflix which is unfortunate. On the other hand the Xbox One has everything except my TiVo content. Where is my universal box again?

  3. “Yeah, what’s interesting is that UltraViolet was the “powered by” behind the scenes tech but they’ve started launching services under their own brand/name essentially … the site “Beta” moniker is cute considering Vudu, Target, Flixster, CinemaNow, Sony are well beyond beta.”

    But does the thing actually work in a reasonable fashion for anyone under any brand name?

    (It’s very possible that I’m behind the times here, but last time I checked, it was all a marketing ploy, not an actual useful service for end-users…)

  4. If you look at Vudu forums https://forum.vudu.com/showthread.php?944550-quot-Share-My-Movies-quot they say you don’t even have to have a UV or Vudu account to start with and it will walk you through creating it. However it sounds like it is more family / friends than merging to existing UV libraries. That being said if the person you share with buys something the originator of library gets it to. If you want to merge UV library start at UV site rather than vudu site.

    Hmm, Amazon and UV is interesting as is Disney + UV to let people choose between UV or iTunes. It is interesting Amazon has never gotten into the redeem code game that iTunes started and UV has mostly taken over.

  5. The Ultraviolet association (uvvu.com) doesn’t have a service to stream videos directly, but allows you to set up additional users to share your library. This announcement from VUDU just allows one Ultraviolet account to be tied to multiple VUDU accounts. (And handles all the configuration with adding an additional user to your UV account.) This is useful for bypassing VUDU’s device limit as well, which I think is five. So if my brother uses my UV account with his VUDU account and buys a Ultraviolet movie, it’ll be placed in my UV account. But if he buys a non-UV digital movie from VUDU, I won’t have access to it.

  6. Weird. So while I can share and be shared to, I can only have ONE UV library associated with my Vudu account at a time. This means we can only really share with folks who don’t already use UV for their own stuff? Or maybe I’m missing something…

    That’s exactly what it is. VUDU is creating a one-to-one relationship between a VUDU account and a Ultraviolet User (that has access to your library.)

    The only real change that I can see is that one UV library can be attached to multiple VUDU accounts now. But a single VUDU account can not be attached to multiple UV libraries. (Which would be pimptacular.)

  7. So it’s still useful for the “mom scenario” but not useful for me and my pal CIABFH to share our collections with one another (as you can see from that pic). So close, yet so far.

  8. this whole press announcement is confusing on how this new. my uvvu.com (the top Ultraviolet locker level) has been linked/merged with 4 guys for over a year (we still have one slot left to add someone else). when one buys a movie or does disc to digital we all see it and our collection has grown to almost 600 movies. only thing I can think of is that this tries to make it seamless for the end vudu user who only really understands vudu streams their movies and not the whole uvvu backend that connects vudu, flixster, mgo, cinemanow, target ticket.

  9. The only thing I see new here is that you are going to be able to manage who you are sharing your UV account with on Vudu’s sight instead of having to log into the UV site to do it. I have also been sharing my UV account with long distance family members for awhile and when one of us add a Movie to our UV account we all get it.

    It is different with Disney, when you buy their movies they come with digital copy codes not UV codes and you have to added them directly to some account like Vudu, iTunes, Amazon etc. and they are not available to anyone unless you share your actual account.

    Same is true when you purchase a digital movie from Vudu directly. If Vudu shows the movie/show is a UV movie then it becomes available to everyone sharing your UV account and available through other UV services. If it doesn’t show the movie is a UV movie then it will only be available through your Vudu account directly.

    It would be great if Amazon become a UV provider. I have slow internet and need to download stuff instead of streaming it. It would be even better if they added Prime to TiVo and allowed downloads like they do now with rentals.

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