Hello VidAngel Family,
I am pleased to tell all VidAngel customers that a new company, VidAngel Entertainment, is now running the VidAngel filtering business. We purchased the assets from the former VidAngel Inc., which has been rebranded as Angel Studios and is now focused exclusively on a quest to redefine the studio business with an innovative model and a commitment to positive content.
This change officially took place on March 1st, and the experience for most of our customers has been seamless. We had a couple of minor hiccups, but when problems arise, we jump to fix them, day or night.
Our commitment to filtering is stronger than ever. And while our company is new, our team is not. We brought all the employees working on VidAngel filtering with us because they love the product and care deeply about our customers. I am not new to the filtering world. I was formerly the CEO of ClearPlay and spent years fighting Hollywood and, eventually, getting Congress to pass The Family Movie Act.
Many people are aware of the lawsuit VidAngel also fought with the studios over the past four years, which resulted in the company filing for bankruptcy. Some people don’t know that the lawsuit has been successfully settled, the bankruptcy closed and is behind us, and the VidAngel filtering business is alive and well and growing rapidly. We’ve already released filters for nearly 1000 movies and television shows through the first three months of this year.
We are also pleased to have Season 2 of The Chosen available to VidAngel subscribers. This critically acclaimed series has been wildly successful, and some families have found that they enjoy it even more with some mild filtering, which is available on our site.
We are making a few changes. We’re increasing investment in the product technology, which had been neglected while the company was in litigation. And we’ve added to our Customer Support team to ensure that we’re ready with answers when you have questions. And finally, the VidAngel filtering business is growing again, which is fun and exciting for all of us.
We love to hear from our customers with personal testimonials or suggestions for how we can do even better. Sometimes people will ask how they can help support our cause. The best way is to tell your friends. Over 50% of our new members heard about VidAngel from a friend or family member. We are humbled to have so many word-of-mouth endorsements and promise to do everything in our power to delight each customer. Nothing makes us happier than when a customer says that VidAngel has blessed their families.
Thank you all,
Bill Aho
CEO, VidAngel Entertainment, Inc.
Thank you so much for all you guys do…I’ve literally been able to watch hundreds and hundreds of movies and TV episodes because of the valuable service VidAngel Entertainment provides! Praying you will be able to hire more and more people so that more and more movies/TV shows can be watchable:) Excited about the future of VidAngel Entertainment!
Thank you so much Dan! We are grateful for your support, and we are so excited about the future too!
Congrats, glad to hear VidAngel will continue filtering. We were glad to see the Lawsuit settled and hope one day content from “the studios” will be able to be filtered again.
I’ve mentioned this to VidAngel before, but since you shared you’ll be focused on improving the technology I thought it would be worth sharing again.
VidAngel should create a feature in your Smart TV app that allows the video “source” to be a DVD or Blu-ray player. This would allow people to also filter movies they own without subscriptions and without having to purchase a proprietary player like ClearPlay. I’m not sure exactly how to do it and would love to try to figure it out but I’m busy with school and don’t have much programming experience.
🙂
Would love for you to think about creating a stand alone Mac and windows app that would allow a user to apply crowd sourced filters to movies they own. This would be a “VidAngel Plus” type subscription. But, for those of us who would like to, it would be of great benefit. Also, any chance of adding any additional studios to be able filter in the future?
Thank you Scott! We have forwarded this along to our team, we appreciate your feedback! We are hopeful to expand out platform in the future.
I live VidAngel’s mission. But to get more use out of it, I need the following features:
– subtitles
– better video quality
– surround sound
– more video services, appletv plus, peacock, paramount, Hulu
Thank you for the feedback! We are grateful for your support, and we have forwarded this along to our team!
Feels good to see a new blog post from you guys. It was starting to feel a bit uncertain, but your words were a breath of fresh air. Very happy to see a refocus on the technology which is a major road-block right now. We tend to watch with closed captions on so it’s not so loud, and really enjoy watching blockbusters with 5.1 with HD quality. Good luck!
We are thankful for what you do!
We are so grateful for your support!
It would be great if you had an app for Chromecast with Google TV. We love Vidangel and have been with them from the beginning!
Good afternoon Quinn! We understand, while we don’t have an exact ETA, those features are currently in the works. We are so grateful for your support! If you’d like, email us at support@vidangel.com. We would be happy to add you to the email list that receives regular updates on new features and content!
Bill, my family is SO glad to have you onboard at VidAngel with the rest of that rockstar team! We are _huge_ fans of the ClearPlay that you founded. We still use ClearPlay regularly today, but we’re super excited to see VidAngel emerge back into our mainstream use very soon. ClearPlay, though critical to my family, has not evolved gracefully, and we’re hopeful that VidAngel will help fill those gaps. We’re excited about closed caption support too!
Though far behind in technology, ClearPlay still shines brightest when it comes to streaming content and physical media (which is why we use them more than VidAngel), because they can filter “the other studios’ “. I think it may be time for your magic touch on the Family Movie Act for some much needed updates to bring it forward into the streaming era so that VidAngel can be unrestrained when it comes to content.
In the meantime, Netflix and Amazon are a great start, but my family would use VidAngel MUCH more if it could filter from additional sources like Vudu, Peacock, and (eventually) Disney+. We’re also hopeful that it will get DTS-X and Atmos support someday.
Again, we’re very excited to have you Bill at the helm along with the rest of the great team behind VidAngel!
We’ve started using ClearPlay more because they can filter Disney and Warner Bros.; however, we don’t like their platform as much as VidAngel’s. Any chance that VidAngel will be able to filter Disney, WB, and the other studios with these recent changes?
If the new VidAngel Entertainment bought the assets from the old VidAngel Inc., did they also “buy” (inherit) the results of the lawsuit? In other words, does the ruling apply to the new company? Is the settlement only binding for the old company, which is now known as Angel Studios?
Does this cover only movies, or does it cover regular tv shows, ie two and a half men, golden girls, 90 day finance???
Great question. We have a solid selection of Netflix and Amazon content!
This is amazing news! Congratulations!!!
We are grateful for your support!
We used and appreciated your services before the shutdown. We’d love turning our friends on to VidAngel. We were both sad for your company and our loss and not happy with what feels like overstepping from the likes of Disney & Warner (trying to word nicely how I feel about what they did). Not cool!
We’re not so much into subscription services though. And it seems to use VidAngel now requires a sub to VA & at least one (or more) sub services.
We’d love to be able to use VA with physical media and/or digital copies that we own / have ripped from our own media and play through our NAS.
At one point during the lawsuit, it was communicated that in development was some sort of wiki type platform where users could post and access codes for filtering to be utilized by a program made available for free. Is this still in the works? I’ve long since lost the address of the site that you all put forth. This “freeware” type service would be awesome!
Now that the suit has been settled and things have moved forward, I’m wondering if that concept was dropped.
Regardless, filtering physical media & our own digital copies would be a great addition.
We really appreciate your support! We have passed this suggestion along to our team.