UltraViolet: Hollywood’s DRM Answer For Content Streaming

It seems Hollywood is not content with plain old DVD or Blu-ray sales anymore. Their new savior UltraViolet, which is supposed to be an easier, legal way to stream movies to multiple devices, is really another form of DRM. The UV standard, which was developed by the Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem, is supposed to offer access to a digital library with which to watch UV-enabled movies on any of your devices. In reality, you will have to pay $2-5 at retailers like Wal-Mart in order to buy digital streaming rights for the movies you already own. The streaming then takes place by using a service, one such service Wal-Mart’s Vudu, which is only available on 300 or so devices and even then offers no support for Android-based devices. Regardless of this, if you use the Vudu service you will need to sign up for a free account and may need to purchase a new Blu-ray player, or a Vudu app-supporting TV, Xbox 360 or Playstation 3 to stream the content to your TV. Even then, the Vudu library may not have a license for the movie you wish to watch, in this situation you’ll need to find a digital copy of your DVD from a separate UltraViolet library which will require another sign-up process. If you’re still following me and scratching your head don’t feel like you’re alone, there are many doing the same thing right now over how this is supposed to work, especially since streaming rights are only good for one year. Essentially it breaks down into this: if you already own it, you need to pay to stream it; you need supporting hardware; TV shows are not available; Disney movies are not available on Vudu. The total freedom UltraViolet claims is nowhere to be found, and is really just a convoluted mess at this point. Time will tell if UltraViolet becomes a useful service for the multimedia consumer or not.