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Why Move to a Digital Movie Collection?

History

I started collecting VHS movies when I was in high school. My first movies were Star Wars because I grew up in 80s. I was a late adopter of DVDs with my first movie being The Sixth Sense used from Blockbuster with gift cards from a coworker. Being a late adopter is not always a bad thing especially when the HD DVDs vs blu-ray battle began. So glad I dodged that one as the live action Transformers movie came out on HD DVD.

Enter the era of digital movies. Initial digital copies were first introduced with a second DVD that would give you either a iTunes or Windows digital copy. I am glad the ones I could choose the format were redeemed with iTunes but I will get to that later. Windows digital copies were not great. My first redeemed Windows digital copy was great until I had to reinstall Windows and thus lost the “magic key” that provided me with the authorization to watch my digital copy. Simply put, reinstalling the OS lost my ability to play the digital copy.

Digital Quality

But we have come far since then. Digital copies back then were standard definition (SD) comparable to DVD quality. Next came high definition (HD or HDX) comparable to blu-ray quality. Now we are in the age of 4K (UHD) comparable to 4K blu-ray quality. It is important to note here that if you have the opportunity to buy a digital movie at a higher quality for the same or nearly the same price, you should select the highest quality because you will own all the version below it. So even if you currently don’t own a 4K TV and an UHD digital movie is the same price as a SD digital movie, buy the UHD version. 

Why would you buy a higher quality movie (like a 4K movie) when you have nothing to play it one? Answer 1: The playback will reduce to the quality it needs to play on your TV or other device. Answer 2: You will eventually buy a new device in the future and 4K TVs are becoming more affordable and standard in most cases. Answer 3: If you decide you want the higher quality to go with your new TV, there is no discount for upgrading from a lower quality to a higher quality digital copy. You have to repurchase the movie at full price.

Old Offers

When digital movies retailers started appearing, I was lucky and saw an opportunity to add to my movie collection simply by signing up. At the time, Flixster had offers for free movies (from a limited section) by performing simple tasks like installing an app on a smart device. Fortunately for me, that included iPod touch because I was a really late adopter of a smart phone. Other companies had offers if you linked your service with UltraViolet which was the first digital locker that allowed you to purchase movies from one service and it will be available on another. I think in all I was able to get about 20 free movies by linking services such as CinemaNow (Best Buy owned), Flixster, and Vudu (Walmart owned) with UltraViolet back in the day. Two of these companies are no longer running but I was able to keep the movies thanks to UltraViolet digital locker.

Benefits

Why is now a good time to buy digital? Price and convenience. I will show you in later blogs where to get digital movies at discount prices. For now, let us take a look at some movies coming out. Aquaman is still in theaters but you can preorder the movie. Digital UHD on Vudu can be pre-ordered now for $20 while the 4K blu-ray cost $30 at Amazon or Best Buy. Bumblebee is $25 for UHD, $20 for HDX, or $15 for SD with the disc versions being $5 more. In this case, $5 might be worth owning the disc with the movie but sale prices during the week of release may affect both disc and digital versions. This is just to give you a price comparison and I will not recommend anyone to purchase either movie until closer to release date or a later blog on where to get the digital copy cheaper.

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