FandangoNow Goes MA March 13th -AND- is Dropping UV Status from ALL Their MA Titles!

[gamescan]

yeah, i'm not going to do all that. that is ridiculous ! The way UV does sharing is perfect!!!

UV only allowed (doesn't allow any new shares) everyone to share a single library. Which was great if you were the owner of that library.

But if you were a shared user, you had no control. If you redeemed anything, it went into the shared library instead of your library. And if the library owner removed you, you were SoL.

[Blurayfan]

FandangoNow actually gave me an upgrade in quality over Vudu for a few titles. I now have 4 Fox titles in UHD, these titles were added through redemption on iTunes with the FREE upgrade to 4K.

[YankeeGator6]

I assume you don't own any UHD titles on FN that aren't currently UHD on Vudu or HD titles on FN that are only SD on Vudu, because if you did, you would notice that MA has downgraded all titles @ FandangoNOW to reflect the definition stored in the MA locker.

This makes it that much more important to me that Vudu upgrade a lot of their movies that are available at other providers in higher definition. It is the only way that they will ever be released from our UV lockers now.

[diamond204]

Wanted to address a few of these...

My list of features of myUV that are supeior to MA are
1- When clicking a TV Series or Movie, whether the title is supposed to be SD, HD, or UHD
2- When clicking a TV Series or Movie, view when a title was obtained.
2.5- When clicking a TV Series or Movie, view when a title was obtained.

For these three questions, MA indirectly supports this now - it was recently added, but only on the web interface and not app yet. Login to MA, click on your name at the right , then TRANSACTION HISTORY. As you say, it is not yet available on the film title page. But you can search for a particular title using your browser search function in the transaction list. OF course MA does not yet support TV yet, but the General Manager has alluded that it would be coming soon... Same with full 4k support...and even more retailers by the end of the year...
MA may not ever add the quality level and the other info on the title page in order to keep it 'clean looking' (well, I may see them adding the owned quality level, especially when they launch full 4k viewing support).

3- When viewing collection, filter by movies vs TV (This helps to see movie titles only)
4- When viewing collection, filter by genre (might be useful)
5- When viewing collection, filter by rating (not sure I'd use that)

For these three, note that MA is only a few months old. They have already added some new sorting levels from launch as well as the movie count. I am sure they will be adding more. They are just getting started.

6- D2D (and M2D) Disc to Digital and Mobile to Digital

This one will most likely go away and never come back. But note it was never meant to be permanent in the first place. It was just to act as a temporary 'bridge' to entice physical disc owners to use digital. And I am sure it has done a good job at that! But unfortunately for everyone, its days are numbered. And since Disney never supported D2D in any way, I don't see them ever adding to MA.

7- When viewing collection, filter by Retailer
8- When viewing collection, sort by Recently Added Least Recent to Most Recent (MA is Most Recent to Least Recent)(myUV has selections but is broken both ways)

As above, I am sure new ways to sort will be coming soon.

9- TV Shows and Series are available

As I said above, I am sure TV will be coming up. Question is will it be a separate app, or just a subsection of MA. While a few shows were UV, the industry as a greater whole never really got behind TV on UV. I am not exactly sure why. It was very fragmented. I hope MA is working on solving that issue so that the bulk of TV material can be MA enabled instead of scattershot like in UV. I am sure it is more complicated than movies, and I am sure they would never launch a TV app without first having Paramount, Lionsgate, and MGM on board and fully launched with their films - just those 3 studios have a TON of TV content.

10- When clicking a TV Series or Movie, view from which Retailer it was obtained

Again, doubt MA qill be adding more clutter to their bare-bones approach on the title pages, but it will always be available in the transaction history.

[B2Net]

Wanted to address a few of these...



Again, doubt MA qill be adding more clutter to their bare-bones approach on the title pages, but it will always be available in the transaction history.

I've use transaction history and it is lacking greatly in comparison at this time. My hope is they eventually add these features and more.

Despite the likelihood D2D and M2D disappearing, I hope it doesn't just like I hope digital codes don't go away.

[mrewster]

UV only allowed (doesn't allow any new shares) everyone to share a single library. Which was great if you were the owner of that library.

But if you were a shared user, you had no control. If you redeemed anything, it went into the shared library instead of your library. And if the library owner removed you, you were SoL.

I know you're new here, and I see you make some valid points. What I also see from you are uninformed comments, this being one of them. Any purchase or redemption made in a shared Vudu account (or other retailer) stays in that account. Forever. If you get kicked from a UV account, you only lose UV rights (the ability to re-share). You do not lose YOUR titles if the owner boots you, you only lose the titles that ported from the other accounts.

With MA you are restricted to a single library with NO sharing. How is that better? Aside from Disney not wanting to participate and a few glitches here & there, Ultraviolet was (is) a better platform.

[boojitede]

I assume you don't own any UHD titles on FN that aren't currently UHD on Vudu or HD titles on FN that are only SD on Vudu, because if you did, you would notice that MA has downgraded all titles @ FandangoNOW to reflect the definition stored in the MA locker.

This did not hapen to me.

[Chedwiggen]

I'm going to take a break from buying digital for a while until the format becomes more stable. I used to give my codes away until I found out you could share them with family members which led me to actually start spending money on digital/Vudu to build up our collection but it looks like we're going to probably end up losing that which also means whatever movies we have sharing now will probably stop sharing in the future which really sucks and ensures I will never spend actual money on these types of services again. I've said it many times before I really hope Vudu comes up with their own family sharing system and if they do I'll continue to buy from them but until then I'm done, I may keep redeeming codes here but that will be it, maybe I'll just join up on Google since they allow sharing, then again I may just do Hulu and Netflix because for the money I get way more movies and tv shows and have just as much control as I do here. As for MA the only thing that does for me is that it gives me an easier way out of Vudu,.the more studios that join up the less of a hold Vudu has on it's customers. If you can do things like disc to digital and instawatch you can do family sharing Vudu so get on it.

[B2Net]

Just purchased a movie at FN (on sale there and not here) that is listed UV and MA here at VUDU and was listed as UV at FandangoNOW prior to FN connecting to MA. The movie now only has a MA icon at FN. The movie is NOT transferring to myUV locker.

This is either an error which they will fix later or it confirms FN only will support UV for non MA titles.

I also have a movie redeemed with Sony that came into FN but won't let me watch it as it only has links to myUV site. When I search that title it only shows a MA icon.

That also is either an error or FN will list it in our library, but no longer allows incoming UV titles for viewing via FN services.

I hope both these are startup errors.

[Cranston37]

FandangoNow is no longer a UV provider...

Just purchased a movie at FN (on sale there and not here) that is listed UV and MA here at VUDU and was listed as UV at FandangoNOW prior to FN connecting to MA. The movie now only has a MA icon at FN. The movie is NOT transferring to myUV locker.

This is either an error which they will fix later or it confirms FN only will support UV for non MA titles.

I also have a movie redeemed with Sony that came into FN but won't let me watch it as it only has links to myUV site. When I search that title it only shows a MA icon.

That also is either an error or FN will list it in our library, but no longer allows incoming UV titles for viewing via FN services.

I hope both these are startup errors.

[danglin709]

FandangoNow is no longer a UV provider...

It is a uv provider for lionsgate and paramount

[gamescan]

I know you're new here, and I see you make some valid points. What I also see from you are uninformed comments, this being one of them. Any purchase or redemption made in a shared Vudu account (or other retailer) stays in that account. Forever. If you get kicked from a UV account, you only lose UV rights (the ability to re-share). You do not lose YOUR titles if the owner boots you, you only lose the titles that ported from the other accounts.

With MA you are restricted to a single library with NO sharing. How is that better? Aside from Disney not wanting to participate and a few glitches here & there, Ultraviolet was (is) a better platform.

If you not I was speaking of UV accounts, not retailer accounts. Retailers come and go (see Target, etc.) so the only "real" ownership is in the locker.

If you had a shared library on VUDU and owned the linked UV account, then any redeems made by anyone who used that UV library got the entitlements put into your UV account. Which was GREAT for the library owner.

If you were a member of a shared library and lose access, yeah, you still have your VUDU rights, but all of your UV rights are gone. Because they didn't go to your personal UV locker.

With MA you can share libraries via retailers: Amazon, Apple, Google all allow for library sharing of MA libraries. Saying that you can't share with MA just isn't true. And if you do just want to share playback, you can always just authenticate the Roku app (same as with DMA) for playback only. Since MA allows up to four streams from MA directly, you're not going to get kicked off because your parents started watching a movie.

UV always had issues with syncing titles, and with Flixster no longer available, there is no one retailer that can act as a point of support. VUDU has great playback quality, but anyone who's dealt with VUDU CS knows it is a pretty poor experience when there are issues. And VUDU CS loves to point the finger at UV as a problem (and UV will point back at VUDU). If there's an issue with a MA title, MA actually has its own support line which is a pretty big step up.

If Flixster was still in the US and shouldering UV support, that would be one thing. But without them, and without VUDU or FN stepping up to fill that void, MA is going to win out just for the CS side alone.

Well that, and the fact that MA doesn't block playback when you are overseas.

[RogerJ]

Updates... (I've also added this info to the OP.)

Update 1: List of bugs discovered so far: (From linking FandangoNow with Movies Anywhere.)

1. Any titles that you already have in Movies Anywhere in a lower definition than you have at FandangoNow, will automatically downgrade your FandangoNow copy to the lower quality dictated by Movies Anywhere. They should still show in the proper definition at myUV.com, though. This doesn't seem to be happening to everyone right away. In some cases it can take a while before the porting bug presents itself. Typical examples...
   • Any UV UHD codes that redeemed UHD at FN because they are only HD at Vudu where Vudu then ported them to MA as HD. Like 'Apollo 13'.
   • Any UV codes redeemed or purchases made at FN that are HD at FN but only SD at Vudu where Vudu then ported them to MA as SD. Like 'Dark City (Directors Cut)'.
2. All TV seasons that are UV at FandangoNow have lost their UV logos. FandangoNow has told me that all of those seasons are still in fact UV but I'm still waiting on a confirmation if they still continue to port in both directions. So unless you already have a show that is porting or have a list of shows that were UV at FN prior to this, there's no way to know which are UV now.

Update 2: Relevant customer service replies from FandangoNow:

We have some information to provide that we hope answers your questions about how UV is affected.
1. All UV movies from a studio participating in Movies Anywhere ( Fox, Sony, Universal, WB, Disney ) will no longer be eligible for UV. If one of these movies are purchased, the title will no longer flow into your UV locker.
2. All UV titles that have already been purchased will continue to be in your UV locker.
3. Your UV locker will still continue to be pulled into FandangoNOW on a linked account. Any purchase from a different retailer, will continue to flow to FandangoNOW as long as it is in your UV locker.
4. UV Movies from studios that are not participating in MA will continue to be a UV title.

Hi. Got some information in regards to your inquiry on the UV code redemption. If the title is labeled with the MA logo, it will not port to UV. If you are linked to MA, it will port to MA, but if you are not linked to MA, then it will only be available to view in your FandangoNOW library.

TV shows that are UV, no matter if they are from a studio that is participating in MA or not, will continue to be a UV title. It may not have the UV logo on our site, but double check it in your UV locker because they should still be there. That is in regards to tv shows that have already been purchased and are in your UV locker.

[lujan]

Updates... (I've also added this info to the OP.)

Update 1: List of bugs discovered so far: (From linking FandangoNow with Movies Anywhere.)[LIST=1]
...

Clear as mud...

94 UHD
860 HDX
3 SD

[B2Net]

I can confirm that FN is only MA for titles that are UV/MA at VUDU. UV will port to MA via VUDU but not through FN. MA will not port to UV anywhere. Best choice to redeem or purchase (not considering price) is still VUDU as they support both ecosystems.

I am concerned on the res downgrade. As I have titles that are higher res at FN vs VUDU, I likley will hold off on linking FN to MA till that is resolved.