Cinema Now has launched a Disc-to-Digital UltraViolet service that allows streaming online video of the titles in your DVD and Blu-ray collection. It is the same idea as Walmart's service that was launched earlier this year—where customers bring in their Blu-ray or DVD discs and a Walmart employee adds the title(s) to their UltraViolet Cloud library. However, the Cinema Now Disc-to-Digital service can be done directly from your computer instead of lugging a bag of discs to a store. Once set up, it's easy to "convert" your favorite discs to streaming movies that can be watched using the Cinema Now app.
Why Use Disc-to-Digital?
If you are new to streaming media, (perhaps you've just received a media streamer, Smart TV, or mobile device with streaming apps), you might wonder why you would want streaming copies of DVDs you already own. Give it time. Once you become accustomed to streaming movies, you may notice that you watch your Blu-ray discs and DVDs less and less. Then, one day you'll get a hankering to watch one of the titles in your library, and you'll search for it in Netflix, Amazon Prime, or another subscription movie service and start watching it instantly. That's when you'll know that you are beginning to leave behind your disc collection and ready to start converting disc titles to digital streaming videos. The added bonus of a streaming online library is that you can watch your favorite movies on mobile devices when you are away from home. Once you experience the convenience of streaming movies, you'll want all of your titles wherever and whenever you feel like watching them. And you can watch anytime and anywhere by streaming from an online UltraViolet account.
About UltraViolet
UltraViolet is an online service conceived by five major movie studios—Warner Bros., Sony, Fox, Universal, and Paramount. Once you sign up for an UltraViolet account, movies can be added to your collection and streamed to devices. UltraViolet is not a streaming service. Instead titles in your collection can be streamed to media players, Smart TVs, and mobile devices using UltraViolet's partner services—Flixster, Vudu, and Cinema Now.
About Cinema Now
While Cinema Now is not a new app, its ability to stream UltraViolet movies is new. Similar to Vudu, Cinema Now offers movies to buy or rent and stream to a large number of media players and Smart TVs. Also similar to Vudu, Cinema Now was bought out by a retailer. Vudu was bought by Walmart. Cinema Now is owned by Best Buy.
How to Use Cinema Now's Disc-to-Digital Service
Go to the Cinema Now web page and download the Cinema Now Player (for PC or Mac). Click on Create Account at the top of the Cinema Now page and fill in your account information. If you already have an UltraViolet account, you can click to link your accounts. If not, you will be able to create an UltraViolet account and link to it.
Install the Cinema Now player on your computer and open the program. Insert a DVD or Blu-ray movie into your computer's disc reader. (If your computer doesn't have a Blu-ray drive, you will only be able to use the Disc-to-Digital service with DVDs.) Press "start" and a window will appear to choose whether you want to buy the same type of video—standard definition, "SD" for DVDs or high definition, "HD" for Blu-ray Discs. You'll pay $2 for the same quality streaming video or $5 to upgrade a standard DVD to high definition. Either way, the price is less than it would cost to rent a video. If the title is available through the UltraViolet service, it will immediately be added to your library and can now be streamed to your computer or any device that has a Cinema Now, Vudu, or Flixster app. Go to the "my library" tab in any of these apps to access the movie at home on your TV, or on a mobile device.
The Cinema Now Disc-to-Digital service is fast and easy. You an be streaming your favorite movie in a matter of minutes. You may not believe that you'll get rid of your DVDs, but a world of streaming media is becoming more of a reality every day.
