The Looney Tunes Big Faces Collection on UltraViolet: A review

I am delighted that the lovely folk over at Warner Bros. have asked me to test out their latest DVDs using a new method of storing and watching... Ultra Violet (UV).

If you've never heard of UV, let me explain. 

Imagine you buy a DVD.  You pop it in your DVD player and watch it on your TV.  But you don't have time to finish watching it before you have to run out and catch a train.  You take your mobile phone, or tablet, with you.  Sit on the train, click a couple of buttons and you are watching that DVD again.  You haven't downloaded it, (you can if you like but it's not necessary) you are watching it live, streamed from your UV account.  It's like having a virtual video store.  Not only that, but if you pause on one device, and then start watching on another device, it knows where you got to and plays from the correct place.  Honestly.  

All you need to do is buy an DVD with a UV voucher code in the box, enter your code on-line, and voila, your latest purchase is added to your on-line UV collection. 

Warner sent over Tom and Jerry and Bugs Bunny from The Looney Tunes Big Faces Collection for us to test out.

I followed the instructions on the voucher found inside the box.  You need a UV account and a linked Flixster account, both of which take a couple of minutes to set up and link together – it talks you through it and if I can do it, anyone can.  The UV account stores your films in a cloud and you watch them through Flixster.  There's a Flixster app for iPhone, iPad and Android, so once you have the Flixster app on your device and are logged in, there are your films! 

The advantage of UV is that we now have Tom and Jerry and Bugs Bunny available at home on the DVD and on my phone and on our tablet.  I could access it on a laptop or frankly any device with an Internet connection if I chose to.  It's helpful when we go to swimming lessons for the elder, but the younger has to sit and watch.  She gets easily bored normally.  But now she has the option to watch her favourite cartoons.  Even in a public place Tom and Jerry is perfect – as who needs sound?

One potential downfall is that, if you don't 'download' in order to save storage space on your individual devices, then you are watching over the Internet.  Whilst the streaming so far on the tablet is fine, it has buffered a couple of times when watching on my phone.  You are at the mercy of the strength of the Internet connection I think.  I'm sure any techie people can tell me if I've understood this incorrectly!  Obviously, those you've downloaded to the device will be fine and you can watch those without an Internet connection; good for long journeys in the car.

However, a great advantage is that you can control which titles in your UV collection children have access to; so there's no need to worry about the little ones starting to watch age-inappropriate material.  And you can set up to five different users to access your UV collection, each with their own log-in and passwords, and each able to customise which titles they see.  The family DVD collection is suddenly accessible anytime, anyplace, as long as it's UV!

The best thing about UV is that it enables you to future proof your film collection, so if discs get scratched, snapped or drawn on by little ones, you are still able to watch the film again and again.

The kids love having access to these DVDs on my phone.  My only problem now is that they want their own iPods or iPads so they can watch themselves!  At 4 years old and 6 years old I'm sticking to my guns and NOT going down that route yet!

And what about the titles?  I've lost count of the number of times Bugs Bunny has said "what's up, doc?"   It's safe to say that our daughters have discovered the delights of the Looney Tunes characters that we grew up with.  From my point of view the cartoons are just long enough, but not too long.  So I can say 'just one more', and they get advance warning that TV time is nearly over, yet get another episode, and I don't feel like I'm letting them watch too much TV.  In short; they love them. 


We were sent two titles from The Looney Tunes Big Faces Collection for the purpose of reviewing the DVDs and UltraViolet.  This is an honest review of the products.