UltraViolet was launched to render ripping unnecessary, but the service is being discontinued. ĭisney likewise shut down its Disney Movies Anywhere service for DVD and Blu-ray discs in 2018, but it then partnered with various other movie studios to create the Movies Anywhere service that lets you watch digital movies you’ve purchased online or on disc (provided the discs came with an UltraViolet or Disney Movies Anywhere access code) on a variety of online services and devices, such as Roku set-top boxes.
If you bought a Blu-ray disc and redeemed the UltraViolet code that came with it, for example, you’ll lose access to that digital locker system on July 31.
We’ll show you how to relieve the pain in a moment, but Hollywood would have you believe it’s unnecessary.Īnd Hollywood has come up with various systems to satisfy consumers’ legitimate expectations to be able to back up, stream, and otherwise make use the digital movies and TV shows they’ve paid for, but they have tended to fall by the wayside. Especially as storing all your movies on a hard drive or NAS box running a media server such as Plex make them far easier to access on all your devices from wherever you happen to be. Copy protection has also been known to create interoperability issues.įor those who would never consider stealing the stuff, this is just a pain in the derrière. The entertainment industry has spent an untold amount of money creating and implementing copyright protection for its content. Because copy protection prevents casual copying to other media, such as a hard drive, NAS box, or USB stick it makes it difficult to make legal back-up copies of the digital media we purchase (not rent) and it raises the price of disc players, streaming devices, and TVs.