Vudu now lets you share your digital-movie library with 5 friends

Seeking to restore the days when you could loan out your copy of a new DVD to a friend, Walmart-owned digital movie store Vudu is changing the way it permits viewers to share its movies.

Today, the service rolled out an update that will permit those that purchase a movie via its digital store share it with up to five people. It’s a smart move by the service, and one that addresses one of the larger complaints average (meaning, those who aren’t tech savvy) consumers have with buying digital instead of physical copies of movies and games. Also, I’d imagine a small portion of the population never bothered with buying digital movies because of the limitations — choosing instead to pirate them. But with today’s sharing update, that may change for some.

The process of sharing seems relatively simple. Vudu users just need to specify the five people they want to share their library with by entering in email addresses. Those that want to watch their friend’s movie library will, however, need to create their own Vudu account as well as link up their UltraViolet account.

This seems like a win for everyone involved because it helps legitimize UltraViolet as the standard for digital movies and introduces new people to Vudu, and existing Vudu viewers get to share their purchases. It’ll be interesting to see if other UltraViolet-supported movie services follow Vudu’s lead on sharing, too.