Downloading movies online

By Sarah Granger

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Looking for something different to watch tonight? Instead of heading to the video store, consider  downloading a movie.  It's a great way to get instant gratification if you want to watch a movie right away, especially while traveling.
 
In order to download the movies, you just choose a movie from a site, download it and play it in a movie player.  Some content providers even allow viewing of movies on multiple computers.  You can also watch downloaded movies on computers or on TVs if they are properly configured.  Making downloadable movies work on TVs requires a digital media adapter (made by Netgear or D-Link), an Xbox, or a receiver like an AT&T Homezone or TiVo (where you can download movies through your provider to the receiver).

With a broadband Internet connection, you can usually start viewing the movie that’s being downloaded to your computer within five to 10 minutes. Note that if you’re running on a wireless network, that can provide time lapses during the download; for viewing movies while downloading, a wired Ethernet connection is a safer bet. Even with a high speed connection, it can take a couple of hours or longer to download an entire film, depending on the speed of your connection and whether or not you're viewing the film at the same time. It's worth noting that movies take up a significant amount of space on a computer hard drive, so unless it’s a favorite or something that will be watched repeatedly, or unless you have an external storage device for the movies, it makes more sense to rent the films than to purchase them. Most often, movies come with protections that do not allow you to copy ("rip" or burn) it to a disk.

Netflix

Most people know of Netflix as the mail-order movie rental company that will send DVDs for rental with a monthly subscription for checking out two or three DVDs at a time. Netflix also allows movie downloads.  Netflix doesn't work on a Mac, only computers running Windows XP Service Pack 2 or Vista.  Select the "Watch Instantly" tab and follow the directions from there.

Netflix has a feature that will show which movies from your existing queue that you can download.  Some of the films they have available for download are high quality, award-winning films such as Sense and Sensibility, The Hours, Letters from Iwo Jima, and they have popular favorites like The Italian Job, Strange Brew and Real Genius. They have the films available by Title, user Star Rating, by Genre (Drama, Foreign, Sci-Fi, etc.), by movie Studio or TV network, and they have their own list of Top 50.  Downloading TV episodes has also become extremely popular from Netflix and other similar sites.

Movielink

Movielink is solely a downloadable movie sale and rental site.  You can pay by credit card, debit card or Paypal to use the site.  Movies can be found fairly easily through their search feature.  Movies or TV shows rented can only be saved for 30 days on a computer and once they have been started, they must be watched within 24 hours.  Purchased films can be saved or watched as long as they remain on that computer.  They will not work with MacIntosh computers unless the Macs are running Windows Media Player on top of the Windows OS.

Movielink also holds a great collection of best selling films, including Breakfast At Tiffany's, Braveheart, Meet the Parents, The Breakfast Club, and Jaws.  New movies are added all the time, but the New Releases section does not have, the most popular films that you can rent at video stores or via mail from Netflix.  Their rental section has less choices than the purchase area. Great  films available for purchase include recent films such as Knocked Up, An Inconvenient Truth and Babel as well as older favorites including Sabrina, Star Trek, Chinatown and Ghostbusters. There is a lower-priced section as well. 

iTunes

Now that iPods and iPhones have become video as well as audio tools, Apple has movies and TV shows available for downloading via iTunes.  iTunes needs to be launched from a desktop (run as a program on MacOS or Windows) vs. bringing it up in a browser, although the store can be located through a regular browser.  Once in iTunes, you need to select the iTunes Store icon, and then you can choose Movies or TV Shows from the menu on the upper left side of the site.

Searchable by genre such as the other sites, iTunes has films like Unbreakable, L.A. Story, The Princess Bride, Armageddon and Roman Holiday – all for sale. Also, iTunes adds new movies on a regular basis including relatively recent films, such as Crash.  There's also an impressive number of films for sale priced at under $10 to buy.  All movies have a lengthy description of plot, actors, length, disk space needed, and customer reviews.  iTunes does not currently have movies for rent, however. 

More Movies

Downloading movies is easy from Netflix, iTunes and Movielink, but there are other sites that offer movie downloads as well – CinemaNow, MovieFlix, Amazon’s Unbox and Starz’s Vongo.  Other sites such as BitTorrent and DivX Movies offer movies for downloading and often for free, but those may go the way of Napster due to their file sharing capabilities, so be careful about using those.  It’s safer to go with one of the mainstream sites.  CinemaNow, unlike the others, allows movie rental subscriptions and burning to DVD, but according to an ExtremeTech review, their selections are limited.  They do have a nice user interface and might be worth browsing for films.

While downloading movies is still relatively new compared with the traditional movie rental business, it is growing in popularity and will most likely eclipse other forms of obtaining rentals in the future.  This is a good time to experiment, knowing the technology will be improving and the selection of movies available during the next few years will likely increase dramatically.  It’s easy, fun and incredibly convenient.

Resources

• iTunes – http://www.apple.com/itunes/overview/
• Netflix – http://www.netflix.com
• CinemaNow – http://www.cinemanow.com
• Movielink – http://www.movielink.com
• ExtremeTech Article: “Which Movie Site Is Best?” -http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,2078459,00.asp