It is now in the works that HBO & Cinemax will come together to offer legal downloads.
Even if you don't subscribe to HBO or Cinemax through your cable provider, you will still be able to pay a monthly fee to have 1500 movies, including all the original content, at your fingertips. The great thing about this service is that if you don't want to download the movies you can still watch them online, and once you subscribe you can view all of the content that they offer from any PC or Laptop, granted you must have a broadband connection.
The only major drawbacks that I forsee is that you can't copy the movie(s) to a DVD and that you will actually have a "time-limit" to watch the downloaded media.
I've always had an issue with this type of mentality from the video conglomerates. The reason why people buy DVDs of said content is because it is a better quality format, they usually have a nice graphical interface to navigate, and those releases offer special features. The movies that are available for download legally or illegally aren't the same quality and considering HBO or Cinemax hasn't officially released this news I'm not sure what the streaming rate or standard file size will be.
Still, I can safely say that the downloaded content will not be 9+ GB in size even if the streaming rate is at 600Kbps because it wouldn't be cost efficient for this type of service at this time. If this is the case, their respective HD shows will not be available. As for the special features, HBO & Cinemax will have alot of those juicy "Behind-The-Scenes," "Outtakes," and "Cast Interviews" available on their service portal.
Still, I feel this service will be a huge extension to their already robust line-up that they offer on cable TV. This also will provide a legit alternative to the BitTorrent community to get their "fix" of the ROME series, though I feel the major reason this is being offered is that HBO realizes the BitTorrent faithful cannot be beat.
Article comments
1 - starrA
This is great, but HBO and CINEMAX need to stop talking about it and need to start doing it.
This article was made in 2006.
Today's date is 1/21/ 2008!
So HBO and CINEMAX should start trying to execute this mission so America doesn't have to subscribe to a bunch of cable and satellite channnels that we don't want just to get HBO.
I have Starz but I don't have cable or satellite because I subscribe to Vongo online. All the premium channles need to do exactly as Vongo did because that will force the cable and satellite industry to drop their prices to an all time low.
Many of these companies have become totally incompetent in service and proffesionalism and the ability to treat their customers with respect.
I don't like the cable and satellite industry today because they are nasty people and I will be so glad when HBO and Cinemax does this.
2 - Brian aka Guppusmaximus
I agree w/ you 100% starrA but since I wrote this article there has been no official word of this union and I don't feel it will happen.
I do feel that someone will embrace the idea of a full fledge channel package that will come through only on the internet. AT&T and Mobitv came together to offer a fine service that gives the customer a glance at the possibilities but they still don't have the channel line-up to get consumers to make the switch because it would cost more to get less channels.