(Note: If you don’t know what Ultraviolet is, please read the following post first about owning & managing legitimate streaming movie collections)
Did you know you can share your Ultraviolet digital movie library with up to 5 other people at no cost?
It’s true. Just by logging into your Ultraviolet service provider (like VUDU.COM), you can type in the email addresses of up to 5 people to grant them FULL ACCESS to your entire library of movies. No need to share your username & password.
Basically, once you’ve invited them, if they are already Ultraviolet users, they will see & keep the movies purchases on their service as well as see your UltraViolet titles as well.
VUDU: CONNECT TO ONE LIBRARY ONLY
There is one catch: At least under VUDU, friends using your library can only see & connect to one Ultraviolet library at a time. This means:
- If they have a personal Ultraviolet library, they will cease to see that library when they join your library. (They can always switch back)
- They will continue to see the movies they’ve explicitly purchased on the service they’ve chosen. (Flixster, VUDU, etc.) While you will be granted full Ultraviolet rights for the purchased movie in your UV library, your service library is separate from UV & will still be visible.
(Again, I think this is specific to VUDU however I don’t know how Ultraviolet sharing is implemented on any other platform because I haven’t seen Ultraviolet sharing available elsewhere.)
kurtsh
Kurt's Thoughts 
You no longer can share your Ultraviolet libraries any more. I just found after I told somebody about it. D’oh!
Yes, I know. This, sadly, was recently disabled on VUDU as they transition to MoviesAnywhere. I have a LOT to say on this topic but haven’t had the chance to write it all down into a blog post but the jist of it is that MoviesAnywhere is taking over Ultraviolet in the US. Abroad, Ultraviolet will likely continue. The question is, how can I enable Ultraviolet movie sharing without VUDU’s interface? UVVU.com doesn’t have a facility to do this.
I guess it doesn’t matter in the long term as you can no longer add to your UV collection: All UV digital HD codes post to MoviesAnywhere now which has no current facility for sharing movie collections with family members.. GEE, THANKS DISNEY!
Note: Existing shared libraries will continue to work. In other words, if you shared your UV collection with someone else in the past prior to 12/31/17, the collection will continue to be shared with them although I don’t know if and when this will cease to work.
Additionally, you can not share your collection with any new family members.
And you can not add any new movies to your UV collection. The collection will remain static, as it was prior to 12/31/17.
Good times.
kurtsh,
what happens now if you merge existing UV libraries? Does this mean once you assign one user as standard they no longer will see the library? In this case one of the libraries has five shared standard users. If the merging would not work in this case would going down to four users allow it.
Also is it possible to edit a shared user in UV to another UV user? If you remove you cannot add, but might this work?
There’s a post online about what happens to shared users. The net of it is that 1) You can no longer add to your UV library – unless possibly you’re outside the US in which case I don’t know the answer, 2) Existing users that are accessing your UV library will continue to be able to but new users can not be added, 3) new movies that are added to Movie Anywhere can not be shared in anyway and will not appear in your UV catalog.
If you use a service like VUDU, you’ll find that movies will continue to be added as you redeem digital codes from DVDs but they will not appear in your UV library.