DreamWorks Animation (Shrek, Kung Fu Panda, How to Train Your Dragon) has signed up with Wal-Mart Stores’ plan to help home audiences convert their DVD collections to online film libraries, the AP reports. DreamWorks head Jeffrey Katzenberg says the new “Disc to Digital” service will aid consumers in adjusting to changing technology; the new program launched Monday at Wal-Mart stores nationwide.
Customers can pay two dollars per DVD or Blu-ray disc which they bring into Wal-Mart locations to be made accessible through the company’s Vudu online movie service on computers, mobile devices, Internet TVs and gaming consoles. Right now 4,000 titles from participating studios are available for the conversion service.
DreamWorks is the latest studio to sign on to the service. Other producer/distributors participating will be Paramount (Viacom), Sony, Universal (Comcast), 20th Century Fox (News Corp.) and Warner Bros. (Time Warner).
Yet another way to fragment the market. How many online movie services are there out there? This makes people have to go to even more places just to watch their movies, and will destroy the user experience. I don’t want to be forced into one particular service. If I have to pay for my digital copy, I want the physical file to add to my library, not walmart’s. This way I can watch “my” movie the way that I want to. Read between the lines here, pay your money, add to their library (which may pay for their licensing fees), they get your personal information, push ads to you and your friends, force you into using their movie service only….. *breathe*, and you don’t even get a physical copy for your home computer. At least buy me dinner before you screw me.
I will continue to rip my discs that I bought. Who is to say if these “services” will even be around in a few years after you pay them. Or they could just change their terms of service (TOS) and make it more difficult/expensive to get the same service for new/existing customers. Yeah, I am going to pass on this. I’ll just make a media server for use in my home with the hardware I legally bought.