Do UV rights expire?

[cmleblanc]

I have noticed that I am losing access to a lot of my titles on Flixster, Target Ticket, CinemaNow and M-Go. After a lot of analysis, most of these titles were converted on Vudu using D2D back in June 2013. So I called Vudu and they said that there may be a licensing issue with the UV rights? Does this make sense? I am not able to see these on the UV site either.

[BluTracer]

What titles are you losing wonder if anyone one else is losing the same titles.

[Chiefy]

I enjoy movies on the cloud for what they are; convenience. They are especially nice when traveling, but this is the exact reason why we need to fight for physical media to not go away.

[Blu-ray Neo]

Originally Posted by Chiefy

I enjoy movies on the cloud for what they are; convenience. They are especially nice when traveling, but this is the exact reason why we need to fight for physical media to not go away.

Exactly! You echoed my sentiments exactly.

[cmleblanc]

Originally Posted by BluTracer

What titles are you losing wonder if anyone one else is losing the same titles.

My Target Ticket and CinemaNow collections are missing over 700 titles that are UV on their site. I did massive D2D conversions back in June 2013. I don't think it's specific to a title, but rather the timeframe of over a year. A strange example is The Big Bang Theory - seasons 1, 2 and 5 were redeemed on Vudu in April 2013 and are missing everywhere but Season 6 (even though it may be unavailable) shows up everywhere and was redeemed on Flixster in Sept 2013. When I called Vudu, they thought there may be a 1 year licensing issue that needed to be renewed.

[Zu Nim]

Originally Posted by cmleblanc

My Target Ticket and CinemaNow collections are missing over 700 titles that are UV on their site. I did massive D2D conversions back in June 2013. I don't think it's specific to a title, but rather the timeframe of over a year. A strange example is The Big Bang Theory - seasons 1, 2 and 5 were redeemed on Vudu in April 2013 and are missing everywhere but Season 6 (even though it may be unavailable) shows up everywhere and was redeemed on Flixster in Sept 2013. When I called Vudu, they thought there may be a 1 year licensing issue that needed to be renewed.

You cannot lose your UV rights to a title unless you delete them. There is no 1-year licensing issue as far as your rights are concerned. Whether a retailer has the rights to stream a movie is another issue.

I believe Target Ticket and CinemaNow both have issues with large collections. I believe I read something about them having trouble around the 1000-1200 mark, but I can't recall exactly.

[OI8T12]

Originally Posted by Chiefy

I enjoy movies on the cloud for what they are; convenience. They are especially nice when traveling, but this is the exact reason why we need to fight for physical media to not go away.

I couldn't have said it better myself.

[cmleblanc]

Originally Posted by Zu Nim

You cannot lose your UV rights to a title unless you delete them. There is no 1-year licensing issue as far as your rights are concerned. Whether a retailer has the rights to stream a movie is another issue.

I believe Target Ticket and CinemaNow both have issues with large collections. I believe I read something about them having trouble around the 1000-1200 mark, but I can't recall exactly.

I have about 1500 movies in my collection and a lot of TV shows. Half of the TV shows exported as individual episodes rather than seasons which inflates my counts. But Flixster, TargetTicket, CinemaNow and M-Go do not show anything over 1000. Only Vudu has the correct counts, but since I redeemed nearly everything on their site, I would expect them to be the most accurate. What is strange is that I have unlinked/linked Flixster several times and each time, my record count gets less and less. So it looks to me like they are losing rights, not sure whether it is by title or timeframe. I would just like to understand this better. Of course, the UV website and customer service is no help.

[Zu Nim]

They're not losing rights, or at least not en masse like it would appear to you. It's a specific problem with the retailers you listed and total library sizes. I checked my own collection at CinemaNow after you posted and it cuts off at something over 1000 (I assume it has something to do with TV episodes mixed in). I think TargetTicket uses the same back end as CinemaNow so it's not surprising that they both fail the same way. Flixster is different and exhibits slightly different problems, as you've noted.

I think you'll find most people will recommend sticking with VUDU because they seem to do the best job overall. You should also complain to the other retailers that they're serving you poorly after you embraced the very thing they're promoting: UltraViolet. Why would you buy anything from those retailers when they can't even present your collection properly?

Unfortunately UV doesn't really have anything in the way of customer service, they rely on their retailers. It's not simple like the one-stop-shopping of iTunes - and even then, iTunes Support will send you to the various studio support sites when some issues crop up.

[cmleblanc]

Originally Posted by Zu Nim

They're not losing rights, or at least not en masse like it would appear to you. It's a specific problem with the retailers you listed and total library sizes. I checked my own collection at CinemaNow after you posted and it cuts off at something over 1000 (I assume it has something to do with TV episodes mixed in). I think TargetTicket uses the same back end as CinemaNow so it's not surprising that they both fail the same way. Flixster is different and exhibits slightly different problems, as you've noted.

I think you'll find most people will recommend sticking with VUDU because they seem to do the best job overall. You should also complain to the other retailers that they're serving you poorly after you embraced the very thing they're promoting: UltraViolet. Why would you buy anything from those retailers when they can't even present your collection properly?

Unfortunately UV doesn't really have anything in the way of customer service, they rely on their retailers. It's not simple like the one-stop-shopping of iTunes - and even then, iTunes Support will send you to the various studio support sites when some issues crop up.

I have reported these issues to all the various retailers, especially UV. I mainly use Vudu as my retailer for all but the HBO shows that they don't have UV rights to. The only thing I ever hear from every retailer is that the issue is being escalated. And then nothing ever gets resolved. I just became concerned today when Vudu customer service mentioned something about UV licensing issues needing to be renewed.

[TheBang]

Originally Posted by cmleblanc

I just became concerned today when Vudu customer service mentioned something about UV licensing issues needing to be renewed.

It's true, one year after your purchase, you still have the the rights, but they do not guarantee you any viewing privileges for free. You can be charged for the "privilege" of viewing your title. That said, none of the UV retailers has done this yet (to date). They have all continued to provide access to your titles at no charge, but they are not under any contractual obligation to do so. You can read more about it here:

https://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread.php?t=243118

And, all of that said, this is all likely not applicable to this specific problem. And I haven't heard of anyone actually having a problem with the "one year" thing. But it's there in the UVVU terms and conditions, so someday it's possible it could bite everyone in the ass. As others have said, all the more reason to continue investing in physical formats that retailers or other rights holders can yank out from underneath you.

[larrs]

Originally Posted by TheBang

It's true, one year after your purchase, you still have the the rights, but they do not guarantee you any viewing privileges for free. You can be charged for the "privilege" of viewing your title. That said, none of the UV retailers has done this yet (to date). They have all continued to provide access to your titles at no charge, but they are not under any contractual obligation to do so. You can read more about it here:

https://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread.php?t=243118

And, all of that said, this is all likely not applicable to this specific problem. And I haven't heard of anyone actually having a problem with the "one year" thing. But it's there in the UVVU terms and conditions, so someday it's possible it could bite everyone in the ass. As others have said, all the more reason to continue investing in physical formats that retailers or other rights holders can yank out from underneath you.

Just to clarify, the link you posted is to a thread that basically disproves the point that they can take your rights away if you read through the entire thread. It seems it may be one of our posters with an agenda against UV and/or a studio, Village Roadshow, that is publishing misleading info (that is unless they somehow have a different UV agreement than all the other studios).

I am with everyone on not wanting physical media to go away because that would likely set in motion the process of rights going away for new titles. However, in the UV FAQs it clearly states rights cannot be taken away.

That being said, I am bothered by the original poster's claim that the titles are gone on UV's own site. That is not supposed to be able to happen. I can see the Flixster/CinemaNow issues due to account linking, but how can it disappear on UV, unless something is wrong at Vudu- not passing info to UV. My only suggestion is unlinking and relinking the Vudu account from UV.

EDIT: I checked my Vudu vs. my UVVU account and it is off by 47 titles. That is about right in that I have around 50 titles that I bought or redeemed on Vudu that are not UV.

[larrs]

Thinking further about it, I wonder if the Vudu Library sharing feature has anything to do with this? IIRC, sharing collections through Vudu causes some of one of the sharing parties' titles to no longer be viewable on other UV services due to the elimination of titles that are in both collections, or something along those lines. I know when I read through that thread early on, it shut me down quickly in thinking I could share with someone else and broaden my collection that way.

https://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread.php?t=241539

OP- are you using the Vudu "Share my Collection" feature or are you a party to this feature through another person's collection?