Limited copies when going from UV-to-K

[Transepoch]

So maybe it's just been the specific titles I've tested so far, but it seems like any of the movies showing in the store due to having purchased a retail copy with UV rights are movie-only. No play disc option, no special features, nothing but the movie. However, alternate cuts, like director's or extended, and generally the trailer, seem to be safe.

Is this intended or just title-specific quirks? Considering there is no purchase option for anything feeding through as a UV offer, I'm not even sure how to go about the usual import & upgrade process to fix the otherwise deficient copy.

 

[JohnJ]

It's by studio. Warner Bros. Provides all of the supplementals where as Lionsgate seems to only provide the audio commentary as extras.

All of the WB downloads that I have checked have all the extras provided on the BR

John

 

[Mark H]

Neglected customers

Looking at my recent posts it feels like a set of complaints even though I love my systems as there has now obviously been a business decision taken by the new Kaleidescape CEO to focus on the US store at the expense of the other regions, kill bookmarking as people will buy from the store so more dollars in Kaleidescapes pocket instead of Amazon's and I am sure most people here on the forum are US based so why would they care?

Kaleidescape systems are expensive and considerably more so in Europe (better margins???) than the US so people like me with 2 off 3U servers, 10 players etc and a collection of nearly 4000 titles feel a little neglected as my dollars spent on Kaleidescape although more of them are worth less than your dollars spent if you understand the point.

The store in the US is marginally OK and if I could buy there it offers me 313 titles to upgrade to Blu Ray where as the UK store where I can buy offers me only 13 titles available for upgrade so disk free is not a serious proposition.

Flagged my concerns to the new CEO and 10 days later still no reply!

UV - how would you feel if you bought disk with UV rights when on vacation in Florida only to find you couldn't redeem it when back in New York? That is the reality in Europe - I pick up a disk at the airport in Paris, take it home to UK and add it to my system but I can't redeem the UV part as it is only valid in France! So redeem in France and what do you get - just the French dubbed version, no subtitles, extras or choice

 

[Mr.Poindexter]

So Mark, what you are telling me is that in France, even the UV behaves like the French?

 

[Mark H]

Very true and having lived and worked there it has some great things as well.....You just need to accept the strikes, sit back and have a good lunch

......and if the Scots vote to leave the union in September I wonder what will happen to whisky prices

 

[JerryL]

Mark isn't the pick up a movie in France issue really a European Union BR/DVD/UV rights issue? My answer to your question is- that would stink and I'd be just as frustrated as you.

 

[Transepoch]

It's by studio. Warner Bros. Provides all of the supplementals where as Lionsgate seems to only provide the audio commentary as extras.

All of the WB downloads that I have checked have all the extras provided on the BR

John

Harold & Kumar 3 (WB) - Movie only
Warm Bodies (LG) - Movie only

Seems the store listing itself shows the extras are missing, so I guess it is just a matter of due diligence on whether you are actually going to get the full disc or not (at least now I know how to go about picking which ones to pop for more vault slots). Lionsgate does certainly seem to have a worse rate of complete content, which is a shame since I think they outnumber my WBs (at least by retail, hard to say for certain overall with no easy way to filter/sort by studio in vault or store.)

 

[Mr.Poindexter]

I actually find this to be perhaps not that bad. I don't watch the extra features on most of the films I have and consider them to be wasted space. I know that most people who load films into their own media servers do not load the extra features so perhaps you are in the minority of people who want all the extras loaded onto the system.

Granted, you may take the approach that you paid for the film and would like them and that is a perfectly legitimate stance, but there are a lot of people who would prefer just the film and not the making of featurettes to be eating up valuable storage space on their server.

I don't know if I am in the majority or minority here on this or how big the split it. It might even be that the ratio of preferences on this is vastly different between the Kaleidescape owning crowd and the rest of the market, but there are certainly some people who would prefer just the film and the sound tracks and skip the extras.

 

[JohnJ]

I don't disagree with this. On New releases I download the supplements and watch one time. I then delete and download just the movie file since I know I will probably not watch them again.

John

 

[Transepoch]

And for those that don't want them, I don't mind the option being available. But when I go bit-for-bit I want ALL the bits, because it's not truly disc-free if you still need the disc for some of the content (harder to complain about for the "freebies" but I'd be awfully miffed had additional money changed hands... as if there aren't a few in that pile. RIF!) So with a preference for the first watch to be via K, rather than cable (or theatre for those without a good hook I cannot pull-off at home,) even one-shot extras should be present. I'm just glad to have done testing before going wholesale imbue & eject.

In the end, I figured it was mostly intended behavior, but somewhat hoping it was more a glitch of not allowing buy-ups from UV-movie-only. Nope, just studio shenanigans. Must be why they call it due diligence... because you're expected to actually do it.

Not that I would turn-down a tag, flag, or icon warning of the feature-only status in the store for those of us a little slower on the uptake.

 

[Mark H]

Mark isn't the pick up a movie in France issue really a European Union BR/DVD/UV rights issue? My answer to your question is- that would stink and I'd be just as frustrated as you.

It is a studio licencing rights issue and nothing to do with the EU. The disk I bought had an English soundtrack and subtitles for several languages as well as the dubbed version so why not the same options with the UV version?

The battle is lost re region codes on disks and where companies sell from and ship too but for download media technology supports the studios restrictive practices and allow multi-tier pricing set by the material owner rather than the retailer and also removes customer choice.

I can buy a disk anywhere, amazon.com takes my credit card and ships a disk so why can't the same apply for a digital download?

With a VPN connection it is easy but one item that is more difficult to bypass is the purchase method as it is easy to check the credit card issue country and hence block the download transaction which is what K do in their store as well as the check the 'geo location'

 

[Transepoch]

Seems the store listing itself shows the extras are missing, so I guess it is just a matter of due diligence on whether you are actually going to get the full disc or not (at least now I know how to go about picking which ones to pop for more vault slots).

Which makes the process take 50-times longer than it should, requires double-checking if the disk itself had no extras (another surprisingly common LG ploy,) and still leaves one with screwball entries like Crank 1 & 2. You would think a 50GB (or near enough to indicate a full BD's worth of data) size should be a fairly safe bet, but nothing is listed in the store.

Why must making one's life easier be so frustrating?