Cloud downloads with a silver lining?

SELLING music and movies by Cloud download is very appealing to the record companies and Hollywood studios. No need to press, pack, store, distribute and collect returned discs. But the download system has to be easy to use.

iTunes is OK until something goes wrong and content or credit gets lost. Dealing online with Apple is then a nightmare.

The ‘official’ rival system is called UltraViolet from the Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem group (DECE). A physical disc comes with a code that lets the owner use an UltraViolet-capable portable to access a digital copy of the movie on the UV Cloud.

Because UltraViolet-capable portables are not yet available, the UV movie releases available in the UK (from Warner, and soon also from Universal and Sony) rely on extra Cloud software called Flixster, which works hand in hand with the UV Cloud.

I tried it with the Warner movie Final Destination 5. Easy it was NOT NOT NOT.

DECE and Warner UK showed not a blind bit of concern when I carefully detailed the problems real world users were encountering.

Tesco has set up another rival Cloud system using Blinkbox, which Tesco bought in 2011. Customers who buy selected DVD or Blu-ray discs from Tesco can use their Tesco loyalty club card to link them to a Blinkbox Cloud account where Tesco dumps a digital copy of the movie for online access.

I tried a test purchase of the movie Swamp Shark on DVD – mainly because I once visited the spooky gator-infested Atchafalaya swamp where the movie was shot.

I bought the DVD by mail order from Tesco, giving my email address and Tesco Clubcard number. An email winged back with a click link to the Blinkbox website which asked for my name, date of birth and Tesco card number. Back came another email asking me to authorise my new Blinkbox account by entering a four-digit code.

This then gave the message: “Swamp Shark (2011) is now yours to watch online at Blinkbox at no extra cost… Your online movie will appear in your Blinkbox video library shortly. You can watch this watch anytime as many times as you like on your PC, games console, tablet and TV.”

So far so smooth, and much what I would have expected from Tesco. But when I went to the Blinkbox website and logged on to my new account, I was confronted with the very worst kind of home page – a horribly cluttered and confused jungle of far too many pictures, boxes, adverts, menus and options.

www.blinkbox.com/Movies

It took a lot of looking to find a faint and ephemeral hover link to a “Video Library”. And this told me I had no movies to watch online. After 18 hours, there was still nothing.

Rob Salter, Tesco’s director media and entertainment, took a helpful hand and my swampy shark appeared online. It turns out that for a mail order purchase I had needed to register my Tesco Clubcard with a Tesco.com/entertainment account to create the link with the Blinkbox account. I’m pretty darn sure I did everything asked of me during all stages of the various registration processes. So it looks like there is a hole in the system.

The big difference between the DECE/UltraViolet/Flixter obstacle course and the Tesco/Blinkbox hurdle race is that Tesco genuinely seems to care about getting it right.

Mr Salter is refreshingly frank and realistic: “There is no question that we don’t have all the answers to these issues and it’s tempting to hold up our hands in horror at that news However, right now our much greater challenge is in explaining the compelling story to the ordinary consumer who just wants to buy a movie and be able to access it across all the devices they own, those devices with disc players, and the increasing number without.”