If you use Movies Anywhere to organize all of the movies that you purchased digitally, you will now be able to share some of these movies with your friends. The new feature is called Screen Pass and it will allow your friends to watch movies from your library during a certain period of time. It’s still in a closed beta program but in case you are part of that, this means you can test it out during this quarantine period where people at home are looking for things to do or pop culture to consume.
In case you’re not yet familiar with Movies Anywhere, it’s basically a digital movie locker where all the movies that you’ve purchased across various platforms are stored and organized. This includes iTunes, Amazon Video, Google Play, Vudu, etc. The Disney-led service is popular among those who still purchase digital movies instead of streaming from places like Netflix, Hulu, etc. Three major studios are not included here though: Paramount, Lionsgate, and MGM
The Verge shares that they will be introducing a new feature called Screen Pass which will let you share movies with your friends. You can only give them temporary access of up to three movies per month. The limit will reset on the first day of every month but the unused slots will not roll over to the next month. So you should just keep loaning movies when you can if you don’t want that slot to go to waste.
Once you share it with someone, they will have 7 days to accept your offer. After you’ve accepted the loan, you will now have to watch the movie within 14 days. And once you start watching, you only have 72 hours to finish the movie. This way, you don’t put off watching it and just finish it once you’ve started. There are no limits as to how many times you can share one movie and even if you loan it, you can still watch it.
There are only around 6,000 titles that are eligible for sharing during this beta period. Which titles are included depends on the studio and distributor. For now, it’s only available in closed beta but they will be expanding it to open beta by May 2020.
