How to Digitize Your DVD Library

How many DVD’s do you in have in your DVD library?  10? 30? 100?  500? If you’re like most Americans,  you have a good number of them.  When I googled what the average is, WikiAnswers says there are 43 DVDs in an average household’s DVD Library.  People have a mixture of SD DVD’s and Blu-ray DVD’s.   According to Nielsen, in 2009, 88% of Americans own a DVD player.  DVD’s are flexible in that they can be played in your DVD player, through a gaming console like XBOX or the PS3, or even on your computer.

Unfortunately, you cannot play them on your tablets, smartphone, or even laptop (if it doesn’t have a CD/DVD drive).  And when you leave your home, your DVD collection sits in your DVD library at home.  Wouldn’t it be great to digitize all of your DVD movies so that you could watch them on your tablets, smartphones, laptops, and even watch them directly from your smart TV without needing your DVD player?

Well now you can digitize most of your collection and it only takes a little bit of your time and funds.  Perhaps you’ve heard of vudu?  They are known for renting streamed movies online.  But they do so much more than that.  They also offer a digitizing service.  And guess who your digitizing partner is?  Believe it or not, it’s your local Walmart store!

Why Digitize Your DVD Library?

• To stream movies directly to your tablets, computer, Blu-ray player, gaming consoles (XBOX 360 7 PlayStation 3), even to your smart HDTV

• Upgrade your standard DVD’s to HD quality (think Blu-ray!) for the best, most clearest picture

• Protect your DVD’s from fire, scratches, loss

• Watch your movies anywhere – at a friend’s house, while traveling, anywhere you can get Internet access

How it Works

The process to digitize your DVD library is very straight forward.  Here are the steps to take:

STEP 1:

Go through your DVD library and see which DVD’s your purchased that you’d like to have digitized.  Bring the stack(s) to your computer.

STEP 2:

Go to vudu.com and sign up for an account.  Sign in.

STEP 3:

Enter your movies in the Search box to ensure that movie is available for digital conversion.

STEP 4:

If you want to digitize a DVD, click which type of DVD you have, DVD or Blu-ray Disc.  Then choose whether you’d like Standard Definition or High Definition (which is like Blu-ray).

STEP 5:

Print your list and take it along with your DVD’s you wish to digitize to your nearest Walmart Photo Center.

Max, Walmart tech guru employee, holding the list you print and bring into the store to begin the process of digitizing your videos.

Here they will scan in your list and process your DVD’s to digital.  Vudu already has contracts through Ultra Violet with many movie houses, including Paramount Home Media Distribution, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment, Universal Studios Home Entertainment and Warner Bros. Home Entertainment.

The vudu database already contains both standard and high-definition versions of many movies.  The only reason you need to bring in your DVD’s is to verify that you indeed own the DVD, it’s not a copy of a movie, and that it has not already been digitized beforehand.

The Photo Center Walmart employee will then stamp your DVD with a barely visible ring.

You can slightly see it in this picture above.  The ring indicates that you have scanned this movie already to vudu.

The pricing is as follows:

• Standard DVD digitized to Standard            $2
• Standard DVD digitized to High Definition  $5
• Blu-ray disc digitized to High Definition     $2

So you can see, it’s very reasonable to digitize your DVD library and the beauty of it is, you don’t need to store it on your own computer or external hard drives, it is all stored for you up in the cloud.

A Mom’s Perspective

I first heard of this idea of digitizing your discs a couple of years ago and was really excited about it.  Just think how we used to buy CD’s and if we wanted to digitize them, we could do it ourselves, but it took some time.  Eventually, we began mostly buying our tunes online and foregoing the disc.  I believe the same trend is happening for movies.  DVD’s will eventually go away, especially once 4K formats take over (see our related article on 4K), which consume far more space than a Blu-ray disc can hold.  Streaming will be our only option.  By digitizing your DVD’s, you will already be ahead of the game.

Many of today’s smart HDTV’s already have vudu as an app in their smart hub.  Simply sign into vudu and you’ll be able to easily access your online movie collection.  You can do the same with your Blu-ray player or gaming console.  No more getting up to put a DVD in.  Love it!

I also love the fact that our DVD library collection can now travel with us anywhere.  In the past, my kids have searched YouTube when traveling, which can get dangerous.  Now, they can access our vudu account and watch their favorite movies…even outside on our tablet if they want!

I asked Max, my local Walmart store’s resident tech, how many discs his store converts each month.  He guessed around 200 or so.  Wow, that’s a lot.  He said many people come in with their large collections, eager to get more space in their house and increase their flexibility of where they watch their movies.  Max, himself, has nearly converted his 300+ DVD collection.  He told me that after every paycheck, he brings in another  batch to process.  On the average though, most people bring in anywhere from 4-6 DVD’s at a time.

My daughter is a big Harry Potter fan, so we converted Harry Potter and the Death Hallows Part I and Part I as well as one of our favorite movies, Madagascar:  Escape 2 Africa to start with.  We had purchased standard definition videos before, but with the help of vudu and Walmart, we now own them in HD quality.

Do you think vudu is a service you would use?