How to rescue your movies and TV shows from Ultraviolet BEFORE IT SHUTS DOWN ON JULY 31
It’s easy and free.
If you’ve bought a Blu-ray movie over the past decade and redeemed the digital download code, there’s a good chance it ended up in your Ultraviolet library ( go.pcworld.com/ultr). There’s an equally good chance that you’ve forgotten about it. The service has announced it will be shutting down on July 31, but you still have about five months to rescue them before they end up in digital oblivion.
The first thing you need to do is log in to your Ultraviolet account. If you’ve ever redeemed an Ultraviolet code, you had to sign up for an account, so if you don’t remember it, try the Forgot Username Or Password link. Ultraviolet has been around
since the release of Horrible Bosses in 2011, so it goes back a while.
Once you’ve logged in, you can check your library to see what’s in there. If there’s something you want to save, head over to Settings and click Linked Services to see the services you’ve previously connected. If there are any, you should already see your Ultraviolet movies in those libraries, though whether they show up depends on the studio, so it’s best to link to a couple of different sites to ensure your titles end up somewhere once Ultraviolet goes away.
To see the available partners, click on Retailer Services. From there, you’ll be able to link your library to an external resource, which will essentially copy your library into their store. There are five services available, but we recommend Vudu ( go.pcworld.com/ vudu) above all others. Vudu is Walmart’s service and it includes every major studio, so your entire library will transfer over without a hitch. You’ll need to sign up for a Vudu account if you don’t already have one and then link your Ultraviolet library, but the whole process doesn’t take more than a couple minutes.
With your Ultraviolet library linked to Vudu, you can then link your Vudu library to Movies Anywhere ( go.pcworld.com/mvan) so you can merge your itunes, Google Play, and Amazon libraries into one. Vudu will also link any TV shows in your Ultraviolet library, but they won’t appear in Movies Anywhere, nor will Paramount, MGM, or Lionsgate movies.