Six major movie companies have signed up to offer their movies through UltraViolet, and since it launched in the fall, about 750,000 Americans have begun using the service. I recently became one of them. And although I found the signup process unpleasantly complicated, it ultimately worked.
UltraViolet reflects the movie industry’s carrot-and-stick approach to video piracy. The stick was applied last week, when the Justice Department shut down Megaupload.com, a popular site for swapping illegal movie files. But one reason why illegal downloaders break the law is that there’s no cheap, simple, legitimate way to copy movies to their laptops for those long plane rides.
Hence the UltraViolet carrot: Buy a legal DVD or Blu-Ray disk, and we’ll give you an easy way to play it on your laptop, desktop, or smartphone. One Sony exec told me UltraViolet is better than free, because it gives you viewing options that are superior to what you’d get from a stolen video.
The Walmart clerk and I eventually tracked down a Blu-Ray of last year’s disaster movie “Contagion,’’ one of a handful of UltraViolet-compatible releases presently for sale. Inside the box was a pamphlet that walked through the setup process. Because “Contagion’’ is a Warner Bros. release, I was directed to Flixster.com, the online movie service owned by that Hollywood studio. First I signed up for a Flixster account and then for a separate account with the UltraViolet service.
Next, I added the Flixster app to my iPhone, my Android smartphone, and my Google TV set-top box. By logging into Flixster, I got access to “Contagion’’ on each of these devices. I was not limited to streaming it; UltraViolet allows the user to download a copy of the film for viewing in places where Internet access is unavailable. Eventually, an UltraViolet user will be allowed to copy a film to 12 different devices: desktop or laptop computers, phones, or tablets. Feel free to delete the movie when you’re done. You own it and can download it again whenever you please.
