The press release headline says it all…
Walmart to Unlock America’s Favorite Movies with Exclusive Disc-to-Digital Service
At first glance, I was like, “sweet! to my hard drive?” Then I clicked through to Vudu’s Disc-to-Digital site and learned this is yet another cloud thing.
The pricing is not bad. You can rip your standard or Blu-ray DVDs for $2, and even upgrade standard to HD for $5. You keep your hard copies and have a digital copy in the cloud to view on Playstation3, Xbox 360, select Blu-ray players, media players, or televisions, and the iPad. The iPad being the only mobile device listed on the website that I could find.
I wonder if consumers will flock to this service in droves or not? What immediately popped into my head is, “man, we consumers are going to have a lot of different clouds aren’t we?” We have our email cloud(s), multiple social media clouds, music clouds, clouds for doc sharing like Dropbox, clouds for backup like Carbonite, clouds for gaming, clouds even in our home via a home NAS solution. We may need some serious “cloud-control.” But that is the beauty of the simplicity of apps I guess.
But wouldn’t it be nice to just have one cloud for everything? Google and Apple would seem to think so. Or better yet, stop forcing us to use the cloud when all some of us really want is our content, on our storage, in our house, playing on our devices.
Where do you want your stuff?
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Exactly where you said: “on our storage, in our house, playing on our devices”. Personally, I think that’s why plug storage devices are so fantastic! I can keep all my documents, music, pictures and other files in one place…in one cloud that just so happens to be in my physical possession. I could even configure my “personal cloud” to store all of my emails if I wanted. I don’t really need Dropbox, Carbonite, Picasa, Amazon or any other cloud service.
As for the Walmart/Vudu service; I already store this media on my “personal cloud” as well. I can access it from my PS3 and every computer I own too. Pass…
Not something I’m interested in either, not going to pay for a digital copy of a physical disc I own when I can just rip it myself.
I have a Drobo FS loaded with 5 Seagate 3TB Barracuda XT’s so if/when Vudu and other cloud based streaming services stop or have content pulled from them by big media I will still have my copy and access.
Keep on making awesome giant HDD’s Seagate and I’ll keep filling them!
I want to control my content. I paid for the DVD’s/Blu-Ray’s. It’s not my fault their physical disc model is antiquated, but it doesn’t change the fact that I paid for the discs. As long as I’m not making money or distributing the content illegally, I should be able to have MY purchased movies in the file type of MY choice on MY computer. Absolutely will not be using any of these so-called solutions like WalMart is offering.
This kills me about these big Hollywood liberals. They’re all about choice and anti-corporate, except for when it comes to their stuff. You’ll never see Hollywood movie stars stand up for consumer choice when it comes to purchasing movies. The dirty secret is, you purchase a DVD/Blu-Ray, you don’t actually own that. If BAIN Capital or some oil company were selling you a product than spending billions in court to insure you don’t actually own it, Hollywood would be all up in arms, but since it’s there own production studios they are suddenly quiet as a church mouse. Interesting.