Hannie Caulder (VUDU 81932) - HD purchases downgraded to SD

[Rex Strother]

People who bought Hannie Caulder in HD - and it used to be in HD at VUDU - had the title downgraded to SD.

It is HD at all other providers, and used to be HD at VUDU. FelipeF - can you ask what happened to this title and have them fix the missing HD issue?

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[Undeadcow]

Please fix this.

[dlamarr23]

This happened to me as well. Please fix this.

[TrentFordham]

FelipeF, help us out bro. Thanks!

[hawksfan503]

Same thing happened to me

[Craig Hathaway]

Please remedy this issue. My HD purchase of Hannie Caulder has been removed from my library. I’m also not able to view this title in standard definition. It would seem that downgrading formats would never be the goal for any provider.

[MaskedMan]

My version of Hannie Caulder on Vudu has always been in SD, never available for me to purchase in HD. I purchase it in HD on amazon back in 2021, and recently as March 4th on Apple tv in HD.

I bought it for $4.99 on 1/19/2019 on vudu in SD.

[FelipeF]

We are already working on this title and are reaching out to the studio if we can acquire the HDX encode.

[lou_493@yahoo.com]

We are already working on this title and are reaching out to the studio if we can acquire the HDX encode.

That's great news, but it still doesn't explain why those of us that D2D'd this back in January in HDX quality are now showing in our accounts that we no longer have the ability to view the movie - even in the currently available SD quality. That's not a good sign, and people understandably are concerned about the status of their previously purchased viewing rights.

I truly hope that we don't end up having to fight like a dog (A.K.A. hassle repeatedly with customer service) to get our purchasing rights reinstated in the future if and when the HD encode has been obtained.

This issue requires additional clarity about why it seems as if you've deleted evidence of customers' prior purchase of this movie from their accounts, which is the situation directly facing myself and many others here. We also deserve to know whether those purchasing rights will return once the HD encode has (hopefully) been acquired. It should be common courtesy (and common sense) to let customers know about these kinds of things when a purchased film has been downgraded or removed from their accounts.

[FelipeF]

That's great news, but it still doesn't explain why those of us that D2D'd this back in January in HDX quality are now showing in our accounts that we no longer have the ability to view the movie - even in the currently available SD quality. That's not a good sign, and people understandably are concerned about the status of their previously purchased viewing rights.

I truly hope that we don't end up having to fight like a dog (A.K.A. hassle repeatedly with customer service) to get our purchasing rights reinstated in the future if and when the HD encode has been obtained.

This issue requires additional clarity about why it seems as if you've deleted evidence of customers' prior purchase of this movie from their accounts, which is the situation directly facing myself and many others here. We also deserve to know whether those purchasing rights will return once the HD encode has (hopefully) been acquired. It should be common courtesy (and common sense) to let customers know about these kinds of things when a purchased film has been downgraded or removed from their accounts.

We do not delete any "evidence" of any customers prior purchases made on their accounts. Everything is kept on record, including all deletions and refunds. Now there might have been an error in listing an HDX encode when we only have SD. This might be the case for this movie so there might not be an HDX stream available for us. We are waiting on hearing back from the studio on the HDX availability.

[kurinko]

Any update on this issue? It's been 1 month since this thread was started, and still this movie does not show up in my library, neither in SD or HDX, which is what I purchased. If VUDU is not able to fix this issue for whatever reason, what is the possibility of a refund or credit?

[lou_493@yahoo.com]

Any update on this issue? It's been 1 month since this thread was started, and still this movie does not show up in my library, neither in SD or HDX, which is what I purchased. If VUDU is not able to fix this issue for whatever reason, what is the possibility of a refund or credit?

This should have been handled already. It's insane how long it takes them to get a seemingly small issue like this resolved. Another example is The Blob issue, in which the the 1950's version played the 1988 version in HDX. It took several months for them to finally get the HDX rights from Criterion and switch the film over to the correct version.

I somehow doubt anyone on VUDU's end is beating down doors to get this straightened out. I always wonder if a single email is sent to the studio that then goes ignored, thus making these issues fester for an ungodly amount of time. If an email doesn't fix something for me, I call the company up to resolve the issue instead. Vudu should be doing the same. The studio should want to get this fixed, and I can't understand why they'd be holding back HDX rights. This is yet another ridiculously drawn out studio situation that has no business taking so long to be resolved.

[Toddwrtr]

This should have been handled already. It's insane how long it takes them to get a seemingly small issue like this resolved. Another example is The Blob issue, in which the the 1950's version played the 1988 version in HDX. It took several months for them to finally get the HDX rights from Criterion and switch the film over to the correct version.

I somehow doubt anyone on VUDU's end is beating down doors to get this straightened out. I always wonder if a single email is sent to the studio that then goes ignored, thus making these issues fester for an ungodly amount of time. If an email doesn't fix something for me, I call the company up to resolve the issue instead. Vudu should be doing the same. The studio should want to get this fixed, and I can't understand why they'd be holding back HDX rights. This is yet another ridiculously drawn out studio situation that has no business taking so long to be resolved.

Unfortunately, when it comes to PVOD streaming, it seems that no one wants to take ownership of any issues that a consumer may bring up. All too frequently, when I contact a retailer like Vudu to report an issue, the knee-jerk response is "That is what the studio sent to us, and unfortunately there is nothing else we can do." When contacting the studio, their knee-jerk response is typically "We have no control over how our content is presented by a retailer."

To make matters worse, I have been trying to get Vudu to retrieve both "Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle" and "Tropic Thunder: Director's Cut" from their respective studios with the correct aspect ratios. Vudu has both films in a cropped 1.78:1 when they should be in a letterboxed 2.39:1 aspect ratio. The response I received today from Vudu customer service blamed my device for this issue:

"Please note that the aspect ratio of a movie can only be fixed or adjusted on your device (tv/ computer/phone). From our side, we are unable to assist with that."

That was a few hours ago, and I am trying to come up with a polite response, but failing miserably.

[lou_493@yahoo.com]

Any chance that someone at VUDU support could chime in with an update???? Again, I D2D this in January 2023 and obtained HDX rights. Instead of having the quality downgraded in my account so that I could AT LEAST view the film in the SD quality that you currently have, I now no longer have the ability to view the film at all. No statement about purchasing rights even appears on the film's VUDU page, which makes it APPEAR as if rights have been taken away. Whether they actually have or not is inconsequential. When VUDU removes the film ownership rights notification from a movie's page that creates a perception that rights HAVE been taken away, even if that's not the case. It's not a smart move. It serves to make customers think that rights have been taken away, and undermines consumer confidence in purchasing films from VUDU. Creating a fear that customer purchases can be suddenly taken away (even if that's not the case) is a lame-brain move. You should NEVER remove a customer's film rights notification sentence from a film's page after they've made a purchase.

The fact that you've not even commented about this situation here in over a month says a lot as well. You create this situation by removing our ability to watch the film at all, by removing all traces of our purchasing rights from the film's VUDU page, and then stay mum about it for weeks on end. Don't tell me you value your customers, because companies that actually do don't pull this schtick. That's three mishandlings of one situation. Kudos to you...

[lou_493@yahoo.com]

FYI,

I started a support ticket with VUDU today after talking to a CS rep on the phone for half an hour about this. I still had the MD2D receipt from January 7th in my email, so I screenshot that and sent it. I also sent a screenshot of my purchase history, where it shows on January 7th that I MD2D a movie for $2.15, but there is a big greyed-out rectangle where the movie image should be AND the movie title no longer shows up. The only information that appears next to that transaction is 1/07/2023, Purchased, and $2.15.

If that's not evidence that VUDU no longer has any idea that we purchased HD rights to this film, I don't know what is. For Pete's sake, the name AND picture of the movie don't even appear in the record that traces the purchase of the film. I would call it a massive longshot that anyone affected by this still has rights to the movie in VUDU's system or that VUDU is going to reinstall them without a support ticket moving forward. This is ridiculous.