Yeah, you're right. But in some sense that never materialized, because sometimes the place where UV synced your rights doesn't itself have rights from the studio to stream the movie [1]. It's a tangle of voluntary bilateral agreements among competitors whose gaps result in a landscape that's user-hostile, but UV rationalized some of it. Disney didn't join UV, and eventually pivoted their own digital locker storefront 'Movies Anywhere' into a US-only UV competitor that lured some studios and content sellers away.
Since the news about UV is fresh, it remains to be seen whether the remaining studios migrate too, and whether the negotiations between the competing rights databases, the studios, and content sellers can result in a user-fair migration. As for non-US users -- shame on all players in this game -- they're always an afterthought to where piracy offers a superior UX, but other video platforms are proving this need not be the case.
The DVD comparison is illustrative, and proves that decent UX with DRM can be achieved despite a dizzying array of rights, but the permissions are materialized into hardware and frozen in time. Online, the industry has been using malleable rights for both 'rent' and 'own' semantics, but for the latter case it's user-hostile. This is why more and more content platforms are missing the 'own' option entirely: you can stream whatever is available, but the selection may change at any time.
For now, Vudu and FandangoNOW are two services that supports both UV and Movies Anywhere. If one pairs one these to both of UV and MA, the maximum amount of entitlements will sync across.
Since the news about UV is fresh, it remains to be seen whether the remaining studios migrate too, and whether the negotiations between the competing rights databases, the studios, and content sellers can result in a user-fair migration. As for non-US users -- shame on all players in this game -- they're always an afterthought to where piracy offers a superior UX, but other video platforms are proving this need not be the case.
The DVD comparison is illustrative, and proves that decent UX with DRM can be achieved despite a dizzying array of rights, but the permissions are materialized into hardware and frozen in time. Online, the industry has been using malleable rights for both 'rent' and 'own' semantics, but for the latter case it's user-hostile. This is why more and more content platforms are missing the 'own' option entirely: you can stream whatever is available, but the selection may change at any time.
For now, Vudu and FandangoNOW are two services that supports both UV and Movies Anywhere. If one pairs one these to both of UV and MA, the maximum amount of entitlements will sync across.
[1] https://forum.vudu.com/forum/movie-and-tv-talk/movie-talk/61...