Maybe you have a vast DVD collection collecting dust.

Here is a cool way to upgrade those DVDs, declutter, and have them on a smart TV or on the go if you have wifi.

The vudu app.

Here’s how it works:
*you need laptop with internal or external CD ROM.
*Internet
*You only need a “smart TV” if you want to watch vudu movies there:
      *Smart TV with apps (like Netflix, Amazon). You may be able to make a dumb TV smart with an Amazon fire stick or Roku stick that plugs directly into your tv.

Reviews from PCMag here:
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2456300,00.asp

1.  Go to vudu.com and create an account (another account?!, I’m gonna die here…)

2. Download the vudu.exe file to your laptop or PC.

3. Scan the .exe file with Norton or other security software (right click on the exe, run scan)

4. Run the .exe file to install vudu

5. Open vudu app, login and add your payment info.

6. Put a DVD into the ROM drive, see if vudu sees it, it will read it, find it in its library and you can select the HD option to upgrade it. (We have an external DVD ROM drive that plugs into our laptop to do this.

7. For every 10 DVDs, it only costs $2.50 to do this.

8. Now you can stream your movies in HD.

An extra tip: some cities have a movie exchange place and will buy your old DVDs if you have the cover, so your cost is even less.

I recommend “Half Price Books”. You can get about $1-2/ DVD, so it makes the cost of a Vudu version $0.50-$1.50. If you don’t have access to such a place, there is always eBay to sell the DVDs for a bit more to recoup the money.

I imagine that you could then download your vudu movies onto a tablet or phone, but haven’t tried this yet.

Flixster app is supposed to be similar, but on our vizio TV, we only had the vudu app available.