After a leaked announcement page was discovered early yesterday and then subsequently removed, the formal announcement from Microsoft is now out to confirm the companies membership in Movies Anywhere.
Movies Anywhere is basically a program where you buy a movie once and have it available across all of your streaming services. In this instance though, what movies are available through this program depends on their studio plus the membership of the streaming service.
So for right now, Movies Anywhere is available on the following services:
- Vudu
- Google Play
- iTunes
- Prime Video
- FandangoNOW
Of course, the newest addition is Microsoft Movies & TV. In addition, Movies Anywhere itself is a streaming service that has its own content and brings together your movie purchases from the above streaming services. When you connect your accounts from any of these services, your entire collection of movies, no matter which platform they were purchased on, will be available on all services.
Currently participating movie studios include:
- 20th Century Fox
- Sony Pictures
- Universal
- Disney
- Warner Brothers
My Movies listing on Movies Anywhere
According to the Movies Anywhere website movies from Paramount, Lionsgate, MGM and other non-participating studios are not currently eligible/available in the service.
Membership in Movies Anywhere is free and just requires that you create an account and then connect to any of the movie retailers listed above. Currently there are two promotions happening as you join which includes getting Spider Man when you connect your Prime Video account and receiving X-Men: Days of Future Past when connecting your Microsoft Account to the service.
You can watch your movie collection on the apps for any of the above listed services or you can download the Movies Anywhere app itself from the Apple App Store, Google Play Store, Amazon App Store and the Roku App Store. Currently there is not a movies Anywhere app available in the Microsoft Store but you can access your full library in the Movies & TV app on Windows 10 and Xbox.
Microsoft Movies & TV App Purchase History
I love the idea behind this service because it creates that perfect world of buy once – access/play everywhere. Now if we could get this same concept behind other products that we have to buy across different digital platforms that would be quite awesome.
