As the movie industry attempts to take a cue from their musical counterparts, the concept of downloading movies on-demand legally has begun gaining ground. And our very own movie guru Joe Lozito has sampled the field of current offerings in the movie download space, with a comprehensive hands-on review of four of the major movie download contenders: CinemaNow, iTunes, Movielink and Vongo.
The Waiting is the Hardest Part
Joe found that, for the most part, the file sizes, video and audio quality and download speeds from the movie download websites were surprisingly acceptable, with most 2-hour movies weighing in at about 1 gigabyte (GB), and download times that averaged 35-40 minutes for purchases. However, in many cases, rented titles were more "chronologically challenged" with some titles taking up to eight hours or more to fully download. While some artifacts were visible (these movies are "near DVD quality" at best), the movies were, for the most part, eminently watchable and listenable on an above average home theater system, as well as on portable media players.
Content is King
With anywhere from a few dozen (iTunes) to a few thousand (MovieLink, CinemaNow) movie titles, content selection is still the Achilles tendon of these services. It's likely that these services will not reach widespread acceptance until the selection of downloadable titles begins to approach that of Netflix or Blockbuster. But as new titles are released (and added to the services), it's nice to have the option of watching them at home, without waiting for movies in the mail or braving the weather.
It's Not What You Watch, It's The Way That You Watch It
The current major players break down into two camps: browser-based (CinemaNow and Movielink) and application-based (iTunes and Vongo). The browser-based sites allow you to browse and order their content all from within the comfort of your Web browser window and the download happens via proprietary, secure connections. You then view the content in Windows Media Player. The application-based providers require their, typically larger, application software be downloaded onto your PC. It acts as your interface to their movie catalog, your download manager and your library of content. With iTunes, playback is only possible within the iTunes player (or on the iPod itself). With Vongo, playback requires the use of their customized PC-based player (based on Windows Media Player). Vongo titles are also playable on Toshiba's gigabeat portable media players.
The Good, the Bad and The Ugly
In order to form a complete picture of each service offering, Joe evaluated each on the following criteria: cost, selection, usability, speed/quality: portability and security/ownership. For Joe, each of the services offered its advantages and its challenges in certain areas.
With his entire music collection stored in iTunes, it would make sense to handle movies there as well, but the limited selection of films hampers its current usefulness. Joe loved CinemaNow's Burn-to-DVD feature and large selection, but they would do well to take a few cues from Movielink's superior download manager. Also, CinemaNow really needs to speed up rental downloads. Vongo has an uphill battle ahead to catch up with iTunes, but he liked its "all you can eat" model of unlimited viewings (non-premium titles), as well as its smaller file size option for downloading movies to portable players.
Which vendor you pick for online movie downloads is a tough choice since each has different strengths and weaknesses. The best choice may actually be to use more than one. All of the services offer a non-membership "pay per view" option, in case you'd just like to sample the wares and decide for yourself. For complete details as well as a comprehensive Movie Download Scorecard, check out Joe's article: "The Low-Down on Movie Downloads."
CinemaNow
CinemaNow, Inc.
4553 Glencoe Avenue
Suite 200
Marina del Rey , CA 90292
www.CinemaNow.com
iTunes
Apple
1 Infinite Loop
Cupertino, CA 95014
www.iTunes.com
Movielink
Movielink, LLC
2120 Colorado Ave., 4th Floor
Santa Monica, CA 90404
www.MovieLink.com
Vongo
Starz Entertainment, LLC
8900 Liberty Circle
Englewood, Colorado 80112
www.vongo.com
