Rob Pegoraro says why bother?
- The idea of renting movies online seems a lot less silly than it did two years ago, when a site called Movielink debuted.
Internet connections have gotten a little faster, we've had time to get used to the idea of the computer as home theater and Movielink has been joined by a competitor, CinemaNow.
....CinemaNow and Movielink now offer better downloading options that reduce or eliminate the lengthy wait to transfer a movie to a computer.
But they still carry too few titles at too high a price. There's very little here to lure anybody from ordinary movie-rental stores, DVD-by-mail services like Netflix, or cable and satellite pay-per-view options.
Both CinemaNow and Movielink look and work alike in some respects. You must run Windows to watch anything at either site. Both require loading their own download-management software as well, but Movielink is more annoying to use — the site can't even be viewed in any browser but Internet Explorer and was agonizingly slow.
Forget using either site without a broadband Internet account — these movies weigh in at 500 or more megabytes apiece. Although you can start watching movies before they've finished downloading, that still involves a wait of at least a few minutes and as much as an hour, depending on your connection. (Over a 608-kbps digital subscriber line, "Finding Nemo" took 2 hours and 22 minutes to finish downloading.)
....These sites' rental rates start at $2.99 for up to 48 hours of viewing — the clock starts ticking when you first begin watching, not when the download completes — but all the flicks I rented cost $3.99 or $4.99 and allowed 24 hours of use.
CinemaNow offers a few other pricing choices. You can sign up for $9.95 or $29.95 "Premium Pass" monthly subscriptions that include unlimited rentals; the more expensive plan adds access to an "After Dark" collection of adult movies. The site also sells 30 rather obscure titles as so-called permanent downloads — "Manilow Live!" can be yours for $14.99 if you have a hankering for the syrupy singer's work.
Article comments
1 - Jim Carruthers
I know it makes sense, so it's doomed - but why don't they use bittorrent? Essentially users pool their bandwidth, so the more people involved, the faster it goes.
You could have a subscriber site where users were credited for their upload/download ratio, und zo on.
However, that would require new models from an industry which tried to kill videotape (and look where that got them).
As a side note - I saw the most recent ep of The Sopranos today - I downloaded it this morning, took about an hour, but I can't pay for it, they won't sell it to me -- why? No, I don't want cable, I use DSL, so why can't I buy a la carte?
2 - TDavid
We took the 7 day free trial of Cinemanow at the end of November. At the time we had a DSL connection, but now have a dramatically faster cable connection (like nearly 10 times faster). So wait times would be much more tolerable now.
I'd agree with all the points in the article mentioned and especially the pricing and the selection of "premium and premium+" titles.
We enjoyed a couple movies but couldn't see how it was worth the 100 bones a year. I guess if someone likes softcore porn (the After Hours stuff) then it could be a good deal.
The selection isn't really there otherwise. For movies that were worth watching, one could go through the catalog in a relatively short amount of time.
The On-Demand options of HBO and Showtime are worth checking into before this, IMO.
3 - Eric Olsen
excellent suggestions, guys, thanks!