Navarr's Life Force

I'm a long time Harry Potter fan.  It's part of my childhood like most people my age.  I'd gone to the theaters to see every single movie, except for 7P2.  I read today that Amazon was having a rental sale on the movie (apparently it normally costs more than $1.99 to rent it on Amazon?).  Either way, I went to the page and I was absolutely surprised to see the rating for the movie was only 2 and a half stars!

Even if the movie was terrible, there would clearly be such a massive amount of fans rating the thing that it'd probably hit four stars.. but two and a half?  Not even a full three?  What was going on here?

A quick glance at the "customer reviews" told me everything I needed to know.  The full copy included some software called  "Ultraviolet," the main cause of over 200 1 star reviews.

Ultraviolet is another feeble, doomed attempt by some dinosaur brain Hollywood execs to restrict the use of your legally bought digital purchase. Ultraviolet is NOT a digital copy that resides on a device of your choice to be used on a device of your choice. It is a streaming service, for which you have to sign up and maintain an account, at the expense of your bandwidth, compatible with some but not all mobile devices. If you're willing to wait another 4 weeks, order this disc set from Amazon's UK website you can do this with your current US account). Not only are you getting a REAL digital copy, but the Blu-ray disc is region free too!! Price + shipping is the same as the price in USD with free shipping.

- John Dettingmeijer

So, that wrapped up that mystery.  Horrible software is murdering ratings.  A damn shame.