http://www.pcworld.com/article/251767/walmart_and_ultraviolet_team_up_to_send_your_dvds_to_the_cloud_for_a_price.html

Walmart is going to team up with Ultraviolet, the movie industry's cloud based service. Ultraviolet lets customers watch digital copies of their movies online from a web browser. Walmart will let customers bring in their DVDs and Bluray discs as proof they own the movie and be able to buy the digital copy for $2 to $5 and you still get to keep your physical copies.

The pricing seems a bit goofy to me as I understood it. With a Bluray disc for $2 you can get an HD digital copy of the movie. However with a DVD it costs $5 to get an HD digital copy or $2 for a SD digital copy. They should just give everyone the HD copy for $2, but oh well.

It uses Walmart's Vudu web based service. There doesn't seem to be any iOS or Android apps, so I'd imagine the experience is going to be a bit clunky on mobile devices.

I think I might give it a try with my Harry Potter Boxed Set.

So if I have the physical copy, why would I take it to them and pay them instead of ripping it myself for free? Going somewhere and want to watch a bunch of movies once you get there? Slap your ripped movies on a 1TB+ WD Passport or equivalent. Fits in your pocket. Weighs next to nothing. Done. No inet required even.

Maybe it is intended for less techy people... but then if you are not techy you probably wouldn't even think of watching movies in a browser.

Wonder what they consider to be HD quality. Will they offer me 1080p stream if I take a blueray to the store?

 

-----signature-----

Agreed, the quality is not usually there for video and audio. It is not a real replacement for physical media.

I read that they were thinking about some special BD/DVD player that would read your disk and give you access to your movies that way. Though not sure how that would really work.

It is too bad they did not try to do this like 5 years ago. It might of had a better shot.

 

-----signature-----

There are a multitude of different ways you can watch your movies digitally on your mobile devices from your physical copies. And they pretty much all are somewhat time consuming processes, some pretty techy to setup.

$2 isn't much, assuming the web player is decent. The time is saves me from having to rip my own movies makes it worth it to me.