I can’t even remember which topic I posted about Disney Anywhere sometime ago, but move over Disney Anywhere because Disney is doing more than Disney Now with Movies Anywhere.
This is functions a lot like Disney Anywhere, and I’ve already shifted my Disney library to this service. Outside of some launch technical issues, this works well so far.
So basically you link up your etailers (VUDU, Amazon, GooglePlay, Itunes) to your Movie Anywhere account. What this allows you to do is buy a movie on VUDU or GogglePlay but play it on Amazon for the studioes participating. It’s a good number right now actually and rumor is there are more studios negotiating with Disney to get in on this service.
Why is this goood? It keeps me from flipping through channels on all my devices, to get to one movie or another, most of them are right there on any service I happen to be on. It also means it doesn’t often matter which service I buy the movie on, by the way Wonder Woman is 9.99 HD on Amazon right now. It showed up in my library in seconds and on VUDU in a couple of minutes.
Unfortunately, just like Disney Anywhere… I think this is still USA only. Oh and they are killing of Disney Anywhere, this might make getting Magic Points slightly more cumbersome, and that terrible service we know as Ultra Violet is probably not far behind it.
Worth pointing out that they’ve got a promotional special right now, where if you link up other services, they’ll give you up to 5 movies free. Big Hero 6, The Lego Movie, Jason Bourne, Ice Age, the new Ghostbusters.
The combined movie library shows up in all of the connected services. So whatever device/service you were using to see that stuff will now be more functional – in some cases much more useful.
It looks like no TV content is coming over. It’s just movies. A few studios are holdouts, so not everything will come over. Paramount is the one I remember, so Star Trek movies aren’t on here. Yet.
The Movies Anywhere app appears to available on all the usual streaming devices. This gives my Apple TV access to my Amazon content for the first time, which is very nice. Picture looks good streaming through the app.
Some of these services amplify items you may have bought elsewhere. iTunes has extras associated with movies, so you can see those regardless of how you bought the item. Apple was talking about bumping stuff to 4k for free at the last hardware event, so it wouldn’t surprise me to find that going on here too.
My Amazon stuff showed up in the service immediately, but Vudu (Ultraviolet) stuff seems to be going a little slower. I see more today than I did yesterday, but I still don’t see everything. Giving it time to see if they get that worked out.
If you link to iTunes and the movie is from a studio supported by MA, you get a 4k version for free, which is pretty cool. Basically, if the studio is part of MA, you buy by price-- you don’t care which service sells the movie, just the cost. That is obviously consumer-friendly and very welcome.
Interestingly, there are a bunch of sites that resell grey-market ultraviolet codes for ~$4-6 or so, which makes buying a movie essentially the same price as renting it. And once you register that ultraviolet code on Vudu or MA, you’ll get 4k from iTunes. I haven’t actually done this, but it’s supposedly pretty popular and unlike Steam they aren’t the product of fraud-- the UV codes come from Blu-ray collectors and Redbox owners who resell the codes to recoup part of their investment.
I don’t have a ton of digital movies (all digital copies included with Blurays I bought), but this service has so far recognized a grand total of five that I do have, bringing it to a total of ten with the 5 free bonus movies. That’s less than half, just from my iTunes account, and I think I’ve got some other stuff with the others. But hey, five free movies.
The interesting thing to me is this allows people with substantial iTunes movie libraries an avenue to bail on the Apple ecosystem and take that content with them to Roku, Android or Amazon.
The weird thing is basically this kind of thing has existed in the form of Ultraviolet for a long time and Disney’s decision to opt out of that and then build a clone seem pretty strange. It is nice that I can see everything I’ve ever owned across Google Amazon and DMA in the Vudu app now. Streaming quality for movies through Google was always pretty bad in comparison and the Amazon Video app is suboptimal.
You’re welcome. I have been a streamer before it was easy to be one, stupid Vizio co-star. I play with a lot of them. I’ve had plenty of experience with Disney Anywhere so I hope it will be as easy as that was.
Except iTunes has applications, music and I don’t think TV has had a really good universal library attempt at all. Ultra Violet was pitiful, a pain in the ass, and just too cumbersome. It was probably easier to pirate a movie than jump through all the shit UV had you do. I am so trigger happy with buying movies now all my sister has to do is tell me a deal and boom, I buy it and viola, she has access to the movie she actually wanted and convinced me I wanted (this is legal via VUDU).
I have no issues with streaming, and Roku plays nice with my 5.1 set-up in the living room. Gonna * that and say I don’t really care about 4k, but Movies Anywhere seems to be adding UHD to a lot of my movies for not additional cost.
True. Amazon though allows me to download an unlimited amount of times. Google Play has a 3 download limit. I mean I could store my music on physical drives, and they’re usually on phones and laptops but when I get a new one it’s so nice to just download them again.
Huh cool. I always hoped someone would do this, but assumed the studios were too wedded to their walled garden approach, particularly the house of mouse. I’ve let my wife know to roll our digital copies into this.
Bonus: we didn’t have Big Hero 6, which my son loves.
Just an FYI, some Paramount movies took a few hours to show up in UVA, almost 48 hours for VUDU and they are not part of Anywhere… yet. Their current delay is pretty annoying.
I watched the Nu Ghostbusters flick on this the other day. The experience was. . . okay! The un-fullscreen control was a little unresponsive, and even pausing had a half-second delay, and I’m confident it wasn’t displaying in 1080p at all in my browser (and there were no quality controls that I could spy). . . but on the other hand, free movie, available anywhere, that played beginning to end!
Oh, and because my opinion is necessary, NuGB was a solid 7/10 in the vein of “using the whole scale so 7/10 isn’t a crushing cruelty”
Did you use the website then? I use Amazon and Vudu applications, never the direct website. VUDU definitely play 1080p, and it does surround sound with the Roku.
There’s the Movies Anywhere app, too. I checked that out on Roku and it’s really bare bones. No indication of what resolution or audio format you’ll get. As a bonus every movie appears to include all the bonus features at no extra cost, though. For watching I’m sticking with Vudu for now because they deliver good bit rates and multichannel audio.
I had to sign up for this today because the Spider-Man: Homecoming Blu-ray digital copy could only be redeemed through VUDU, the Sony digital store, or Movies Anywhere. It worked pretty seamlessly, to my surprise. I assume this might vary by studio, but I was pleased to see Spider-Man now shows up in my iTunes library (my digital library of choice) just as if I’d bought it directly from Apple. Even includes the 4K version, not that I have any place to take advantage of that.
My only complaint with VUDU is it is not on Amazon devices. That is more than likely Amazon’s fault, but it would be nice if the devices took a neutral stance. It should be good enough that I bought Amazon’s device and I do most my content from them… but VUDU participated in UVA and Amazon simply didn’t. Also Disc to Digital gives VUDU a bit leg up.
Amazon’s been pretty weird about their video store stuff. I think they’ve gotten into major tiffs with Disney making it impossible to preorder many of their Blurays on the site. For a long time you could not get Amazon video on an AppleTV (though it wasn’t always clear if that was Apple or Amazon’s fault) and you have to install the Amazon app store to get it on Android. Since Vudu is a Walmart owned service it’s just another example of them trying to guard their borders, so to speak, one reason I have a strong preference for Roku who are not themselves another video storefront.
I agree. When new people ask me about streaming devices, I always guide them to Roku not Amazon. Amazon’s walled garden approach with with streamers, tablets and even to some extent their e-readers is just obnoxious. This Movies Anywhere is very promising since it shows up in Amazon and VUDU which means I don’t really have to choose between the two devices.
