Our ace digital-service reviewing friend Brad Hill has just sized up Movielink:

On Monday, November 11, the Movielink service finally rolled out a working model of its long-awaited Internet rental service. The catalog is so thin as to make this a concept opening, at best. But the service is completely operable, and this review focusses on Movielink's consumer experience and value proposition.

SUMMARY:

* Generally smooth operation with minor Website bugs and inconsistencies.

* Subpar video quality.

* In concept, competes well against VHS and DVD rental stores; less well against pay-per-view. Per-download payment model contrasts with Netflix subscription.

* Mounts significant challenge to P2P as a movie auditioning solution, but not as a collecting solution.

TOS:

* Rentals last 30 days from purchase, even if downloading doesn't transpire immediately.

* Viewing must occur within any continuous 24-hour period during the 30-day rental.

* This paragraph from the TOS is interesting:

b. Automatic Updating.

When connected to the Internet, the Software may communicate, via remote activation or otherwise, with Movielink and/or the firms with which it does business with regard to the need for periodic updates, modifications and/or reinstallations ("Updates") to address security, interoperability, and/or performance issues. You consent that Movielink and the firms with which it does business may periodically make such communications remotely and download such Updates to the Software stored on your computer without further notice to you and that such Updates shall be incorporated into this Agreement under the definition of Software and thus subject to the same use restrictions.

* The following two lines of the TOS conflict:

---"reasonable number of copies of the Software may be made for back-up purposes."

---user may not "modify, duplicate, reproduce or copy (except to make one backup copy) the Software"

MOVIELINK MANAGER:

* Satellite program required for downloading and viewing movies.

* Auto-resumption of broken downloads.

* Flexible Download Queue can change order of stacked downloads even during transfer. However, this feature is somewhat negated by the site's inability to process more than one rental order at a time.

* Auto-cleanup--removes expired movies.

* Unsizable window isn't quite big enough to show bottom information bar.

* Program keeps an activity log (under the Notifications tab) of all transfer commands, including pauses and resumptions.

* Movielink Manager operates as advertised, with no glitches during testing.

INSTALLATION OF MM:

* Installation location: documents available space on all drives, and reminds the user that movie files require 600-1000MB. This implies, but does not state, that movies must be downloaded to the same drive as Movielink Manager location. Indeed, when downloading, the user is not offered a location dialog.

* Downloading, unpacking, installing, all transpire directly from the online source.

* Movielink Manager does not indicate the user's My Picks list of film bookmarks.

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