A few weeks back I noted that Flixster would be closing soon and had written to me to say that my film collection would transition to Google Play.
Well last week, that time finally came to pass. The Flixster website is shutting down in December, and I’d need to migrate my digital collection to Google.
Previously I’d questioned how easy that would be, noting that at least one film in my collection was actually no longer available on Flixster. So how many more would be lost in the move to Google?
The answer, I’m pleased to report, is none. Not only did my entire 37 film and TV series collection migrate seamlessly, even the title that had been unavailable – Lost Horizon (1937) – is now viewable via Google.
The only oddity was that I had to migrate each title individually. So instead of clicking a big button once, I had to click each title a couple of times. Once to select the title, and to select soundtrack and subtitle options, and once to add the film to my collection.
Rinse and repeat 37 times.
For the most part, this was easy. Only with the film Sicario was I presented with seemingly two identical options. I somehow ended up with the “Bonus version” of the excellent Denis Villeneuve thriller. The film actually runs just over two hours, but my version seems to run another 50 minutes or so. There isn’t a super-long “Director’s Cut” as far as I’m aware. Closer inspection shows that a bunch of “DVD extras” have been attached to the end of the film. So that’s fine by me. One of my complaints about digital versions of films and television is that the extras are often not included.
So well done all on successfully shifting my collection over to another platform without major issue.
I suspect that I’m lucky, and that others may find that they don’t get their full collections migrated. And it would still be really good if we had the equivalent of “Movies Anywhere” in the UK, so that I can merge a couple of iTunes titles, and a handful more Amazon titles, into one digital collection with my Google one.
I won’t hold my breath.