One of the things I’ve come to love about Blu-ray’s is that they come with a digital copy. Most of the time I’ll download the digital copy before plopping in the Blu-ray disc to watch the movie in all its HD glory.
Some of you may wonder why but as someone with a movie addiction I love to load up movies to take on the go. I’ll watch them during my lunch, while taking care of business (if you know what I mean), or use them to keep my littles quiet while out for a bit at restaurant. I’ve even been known to use them while we wait in the emergency room from time to time.
Imagine my excitement today when I came home to a pile of freshly delivered titles from Warner Home Video. Amongst them was three titles that had digital copies. These digital copies are shared on the DVD version of the disc. Normally, when you pop one of these versions in you’re asked if you’d like to run the digital copy or go to the DVD menu.
Out of the three, only one worked. It was Batman: Year One. The other two, Horrible Bosses and, to my astonishment, Green Lantern were missing the digital copy from the DVD disc. Of course, you can’t download directly from iTunes because it tells you to insert your digital copy disc.
Having a background in IT I decided to a little investigating. So, I opened up the disc, as you would something like My Documents, and all I seen was the typical folders you see on a straight DVD on the two titles where I didn’t get the prompt to download the digital version of the film.
I then inserted Batman: Year One back in and opened it in the same fashion. There were all kinds of additional files and folders on the DVD. As you can see from the screenshot below I’m not making this up. My digital copies are missing, and I want them.
I’ve already sent an email to my WHV contacts to see if there was a few print issues, or if this will be widespread as Horrible Bosses was released last week (Oct 11) and Green Lantern hit Blu-ray next week (Oct 18).
Stay tuned as I investigate this issue further.
Update #1: Someone posted this over at Blu-ray.com. One of the things brought up is that I did not “correctly” follow the instructions on the insert. Apparently, a lot of digital copies are over only available through Ultraviolet now, which to my current knowledge is US based only (at this time). As I am not based in the US, but Canada I provided a copy of the insert and am now posting it below.
I have also contacted Ultraviolet for more information regarding their service for Canadian customers.
Update #2: Warner has gotten back to us advising that there was a manufacturing error and they will be mailing out replacement discs to those who request them over at wbdigitalcopy.com/support. Consider the case of the missing digital copies now closed!
