My husband is a total techy. A total techy. Since he is always up-to-date with the latest, sometimes even before it is available to the public, it is rare that I can do something techish to impress him. This week, I impressed him.
About a week ago, we saw a commercial for Walmart’s new disc-to-digital service, Vudu. Frankly, I wasn’t really paying attention to the commercial (as usual), but he was and when it was over he was all excited about the service and recapped the gist for me. I was pretty sure that we would soon experience the service for ourselves because I was sure he would want to check it out. Then I was asked to check out the service and share my thoughts. How cool and perfect timing.
Before I go any further, let me stop and explain Vudu. Vudu allows you to get a digital copy of your favorite DVDs and Blu-Rays (that you already own). This allows you to watch your movies any time any place (as long as you have Internet service). Say you were going on a road trip or visiting grandma. Instead of bringing all of your movies with you, you could Vudu them storing a digital copy of the movie to access anywhere you have access the Internet. Pretty cool.
What’s even cooler, is that this service also allows you to upgrade your movie. Let’s say you bought your favorite movie on DVD in standard definition, you could Vudu the movie and get a standard def copy of the movie for just $2 or you could upgrade your digital copy to HD for $5. That’s an inexpensive way to upgrade your movie.
Another great frugal reason to use Vudu is that you can take a movie that is totally scratched up and get a digital copy for a lot less than buying a new movie. Plus by converting DVDs you watch frequently, you can eliminate the pile of recently watched DVDs. I don’t know about you, but in my house there is typically a pile of about a dozen movies that were recently watched and not put away.
My first thought when deciding which movie to Vudu was to select one of my daughter’s movies — since she’s the one who always wants a movie when we aren’t at home. But I quickly learned that not all movies have agreed to the licensing of this service yet, so all of the Disney movies were out.
In the end I choose to upgrade a special move, Behind Enemy Lines. It may not be a critically-acclaimed, award-winning movie, but it is the movie my husband and I saw on our first date. Actually, if you want to know the truth… we went to see Not Another Teen Movie, which was horrible. After the movie, my rebellious husband convinced goodie-two-shoes me to sneak into Behind Enemy Lines (shhhh), something I had never done before or since. At any rate, we saw (and really enjoyed) the second movie and since we’ve been married for eight years, it holds a special place in our hearts.
Back to Vudu.
Here are a couple of things you need to know about the service.
- Not all Walmarts offer the service at this time, so call to make sure yours does. Luckily, mine did.
- The studios that offer digital rights to Vudu at this time include Paramount Home Media Distribution, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment, Universal Studios Home Entertainment and Warner Bros. Home Entertainment.
- You must register and “upload” your movie BEFORE you go to Walmart. (Glad I called the store, or I would have made a useless trip.)
- You MUST take your movie with you to Walmart. (I looked all over the website and didn’t see anywhere that told me to take the movie with me. But I figured I needed to, so I did. Good thing because they will not complete the transaction without seeing your copy.)
- They don’t actually do anything with your movie because really you are just buying the digital rights, but you can only get digital rights to a movie you already own.
- To complete the transaction, you take your receipt that shows you registered (for free) online to Walmart. Once you pay the one-time fee (either $2 or $5) at Walmart the digital copy is automatically added to your online account.
It is a simple process, but there seem to be a lot of steps. And it is such a new process that the woman helping me had only done it once before and had to read the manual to help me complete my transaction. Follow my full journey in my Google + story.
Once your movie is digitized, you own it forever (even if you don’t own the disc copy forever). It is stored online so you never again have to worry about breaking or scratching the disc.
How to watch the movie.
As I mentioned before, in order to watch the movie you must have Internet access. That means you either need an Internet capable TV, an Xbox360/Playstation 3/DVD player or you have to watch the movie on your computer or iPad. Although you can watch it on any of these forms, I learned that you can only watch it in HD on a TV. The computer and iPad only allow you to stream the SD version.
In addition to being able to watch movies you own, you can also rent movies via Vudu for $3.99.
All in all, we are impressed. Hubs loves that we now have an HD version, and since we have two TVs with Internet capabilities (remember total techy) we will have no problem watching this movie in HD. If you want to go digital with your movies, Vudu gets a thumbs up from us — both the techy and me!
Disclosure – I am a member of the Collective Bias™ Social Fabric® Community. This shop has been compensated as part of a social shopper insights study for Collective Bias™, however, all thoughts (and good times) are my own. #CBias #SocialFabric
I had heard a little about Vudu in a couple of places, but hadn’t looked into it too much as of yet. Now that I know how easy it is – and how affordable – I definitely will be! 🙂
Hey! you did such a great job explaining this- much better than Walmart- they should use this blog to help guide their consumers! :))
Thanks! I hope they read this and add to their site that you have to take your movie with you. Otherwise, I bet people won’t! 🙂