Physical & Digital EST: The Future of Home Video Discussion Thread

[PCFan]

Originally Posted by ArmyOfDarknessAW

See I actually find the scrolling endless movies on a screen the worst part of digital. The 700+ I have in VUDU is cumbersome to navigate. Even iTunes I can't stand navigating. These companies don't want to let me put movies in categories or folders that I specifically want. That sucks.

At least Vudu has a Watch List on some devices for movies in progress so you can continue where you left off and not have to navigate through your whole movie library to get back to continue watching a movie.

[ArmyOfDarknessAW]

Originally Posted by PCFan

At least Vudu has a Watch List on some devices for movies in progress so you can continue where you left off and not have to navigate through your whole movie library to get back to continue watching a movie.

That is a feature I never use because I never stop a movie and restart it needing that. I talking browsing and looking for something to watch. I don't have all the movies from a trilogy together, movies from a certain actor together, however I want to set it up. I'm stuck with what VUDU has in place and I hate that.

[V40LLY]

Originally Posted by ArmyOfDarknessAW

These companies don't want to let me put movies in categories or folders that I specifically want.

Like what?

[ArmyOfDarknessAW]

Originally Posted by V40LLY

Like what?

What do you mean like what? Do you have no organization with your movies? I can't put all my Fast and Furious movies together, all my 007 movies together, I can't put my Arnold movies together like I'd like to. I'm stuck with the order they have it in and that isn't practical. Not to mention these damn bundles you buy stay bundles which is dumb. Overall they should let users organize their collection like they can with real discs.

[V40LLY]

The only thing you can do, as an alternative, is to look through your collection under genres. Personally, I just prefer them to be in alphabetical order.

When you say "bundles you buy stay bundles", how do you mean?

[ArmyOfDarknessAW]

Originally Posted by V40LLY

The only thing you can do, as an alternative, is to look through your collection under genres. Personally, I just prefer them to be in alphabetical order.

When you say "bundles you buy stay bundles", how do you mean?

I am a bit more odd with how I like my collection set up and the fact I can't bugs me. This is a feature digital needs to add imo.

Here are some examples for bundles.


Another thing that is beyond stupid is two versions next to each other.

[V40LLY]

Still don't get what you're trying to explain.

I can see that you have 2 versions of Brick Mansions. Did you buy them individually, or did they come together?

[ArmyOfDarknessAW]

Originally Posted by V40LLY

Still don't get what you're trying to explain.

I can see that you have 2 versions of Brick Mansions. Did you buy them individually, or did they come together?

No I did not buy them individually. One code from my Blu-ray forced me into owning both copies of the movie. I don't want that and didn't ask for that and now I'm forced to have 2 versions.

As for my other issue look at the laugh out loud bundle.

All of those movies are located in that bundle and can't be separated from the bundle. That looks terrible and is useless for searching. Stuff like that bugs me.

[V40LLY]

Got it. That sucks man!

iTunes doesn't do that.

Can you delete stuff on there like you can on iTunes (Hide in the cloud).

If so, with Brick Mansions, you could buy it from the Vudu store, after deleting the UV version.

If you had bought those titles in the Laugh out Loud bundle individually, would it still display like that. I guess you don't know.

I'm so glad I chose iTunes.

[ArmyOfDarknessAW]

Originally Posted by V40LLY

Got it. That sucks man!

iTunes doesn't do that.

Can you delete stuff on there like you can on iTunes (Hide in the cloud).

If so, with Brick Mansions, you could buy it from the Vudu store, after deleting the UV version.

If you had bought those titles in the Laugh out Loud bundle individually, would it still display like that. I guess you don't know.

I'm so glad I chose iTunes.

I could buy any movie from a bundle and it will display separately too. Such as I have an action bundle with Lethal Weapon, but I also own it separately. I am locked in though with VUDU at this point which is another digital issue. Even if I want to switch I can't without buying everything again. I can stick one disc into any Blu-ray player and I'm good, but I'm stuck with VUDU now for the rest of my digital time. The idea of two libraries from different places would drive me nuts so I have to stick with VUDU. If I could I'd love to bring them all into Google Play honestly. That is my favorite of all the streaming companies.

[V40LLY]

Here's a few screen shots from my videos app on my cell phone. It is displayed the same way on Apple TV, or in my iTunes library on the computer.

Notice the bundles-Back to the Future, Bad Boys, Beverly Hills Cop, Indiana Jones, Lethal Weapon.

[Dynamo of Eternia]

Originally Posted by V40LLY

The only thing you can do, as an alternative, is to look through your collection under genres. Personally, I just prefer them to be in alphabetical order.

When you say "bundles you buy stay bundles", how do you mean?

Alphabetical order can be great for most movies, but sucks for series/sequels/related movies with different titles.

For a few examples:

Batman Begins, The Dark Knight, The Dark Knight Rises. The last two will show back to back, BB will be separated. Though the last two films could potentially get separated as well, since there was an animated movie adaptation release of "The Dark Knight Returns" comic, which alphabetically would fall right in between those two sequels of the Nolan trilogy.

Then there is the Jurassic Park Movies. The 2nd film is titled "The Lost World: Jurassic Park," so it will get separated out alphabetically.

There's the Kevin Smith "View Askewniverse" films, Clerks, Mallrats, Chasing Amy, Dogma, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, and Clerks II. I keep my Blu-Rays together on the shelf, and in that order. You can't do that with these digital services.

I do something similar with all of the Marvel Cinematic Universe films. I have them all together in the order they were released. That's not an option with digital.


And ArmyOfDarknessAW's example of the Fast& Furious films is a good example as well. Titles like 2 Fast 2 Furious, Fast 5, Furious 7, etc will get separated from each other alphabetically.


And this can even lead to minor annoyances where all of the films in a series are grouped together because they start with the same main title, but then after the first film, instead of simply having a sequel number, each movie has a subtitle, which can vary as to where each film lands alphabetically. The Harry Potter films come to mind as an example.

[ArmyOfDarknessAW]

For unbundled movies it is like that for me too when I put in alphabetical. However can you put say Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes next to Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes? They are in succession in the franchise, but sit completely far apart from each other digitally and I can't put something like that together.

[Dynamo of Eternia]

Originally Posted by V40LLY

Here's a few screen shots from my videos app on my cell phone. It is displayed the same way on Apple TV, or in my iTunes library on the computer.

Notice the bundles-Back to the Future, Bad Boys, Beverly Hills Cop, Indiana Jones, Lethal Weapon.

[Show spoiler]

Those respective series end up bundled together alphabetically because they start with the same main title for each series, followed by a number or subtitle.

The Indiana Jones films actually illustrate my last point in my previous post (in which I pointed out Harry Potter being an example). They are all grouped together, but not in the correct order because the subtitles are forcing them into alphabetical order, not in order of when each film was released.

Plus technically the title of the first film should just be "Raiders of the Lost Ark" without the "Indiana Jones" in front of it, but I digress as that's not a digital specific issue, that's just a re-titling they did, thankfully only on the packaging (or in this case the image representing the movie digitally), and not in the movie, itself.

[V40LLY]

Yes, but they ain't icon badged as a bundle, that needs to be opened, like your Vudu does.

And you have Lethal Weapon duplicated in your library, because you bought it once and at a later date, you got a bundle that had it in, also?

[ArmyOfDarknessAW]

Originally Posted by V40LLY

Yes, but they ain't icon badged as a bundle, that needs to be opened, like your Vudu does.

And you have Lethal Weapon duplicated in your library, because you bought it once and at a later date, you got a bundle that had it in, also?

I got Lethal Weapon in a free bundle for signing up for VUDU, but I did disc to digital on it too in order to have it with the rest. Otherwise buying a movie twice isn't something I plan to do.

[V40LLY]

What can I say. You backed the wrong horse.

VUDU sucks!

iTunes rules!

[Dynamo of Eternia]

The only annoyance with Vudu (which I've only used a little in accessing digital copies that came with my physical copies) is that it seems that each time I sign into it, it defaults to the movies being in the order they were redeemed, with the most recent being first, with the earliest redemption being last. There is the option to reorganize them in alphabetical order, which annoyingly has to be manually selected each time the service is accessed, but regardless, neither option will put related films that are out of sync alphabetically together in order as I described earlier, and neither will iTunes. So going with iTunes does not prevent the fundamental main issue at hand.

[Fiffy]

Originally Posted by Dynamo of Eternia

There is the option to reorganize them in alphabetical order, which annoyingly has to be manually selected each time the service is accessed, but regardless, neither option will put related films that are out of sync alphabetically together in order as I described earlier, and neither will iTunes. So going with iTunes does not prevent the fundamental main issue at hand.

Actually, you can do this with iTunes content if you stream locally from an iTunes server. You can set a sort order for movies in iTunes. For example, set the sort order for "The Lost World" to "Jurassic Park 2: The Lost World", and it will appear right after "Jurassic Park" in the list when you browse the local library in iTunes or from an Apple TV. Doesn't work if you stream from the cloud on an Apple TV, obviously, since you cannot edit the metadata of movies that reside on Apple's servers.

BTW, a little known feature in iTunes is that you can add movies to playlists, so that's another way to group related movies.

[ArmyOfDarknessAW]

Originally Posted by V40LLY

What can I say. You backed the wrong horse.

VUDU sucks!

iTunes rules!

Fair enough, but they are a major player in this streaming market you're advocating. You can read the forums and see I'm not the only one with the issues. In the end there are really only 4 major contenders (iTunes, VUDU, Google Play, Amazon) so these contenders should be more on point with features people actually want. That is fine and dandy if Apple does everything people want, but everybody flocking to them isn't good either. Competition fuels innovation and sales.