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Movielink.com: Nice But Not Ready For Prime Time
We had just a couple of references here on Movielink.com and some comments but no reviews. Well, I have tried it and here are my thoughts on it.
For those not familiar with that, they call themselves an "IP based movie rental service". You basically rent movies by downloading them to your PC (as of now, only WindowsMedia or RealPlayer formats) for watching at a convenient time.
The media files have about 512Mb which in my case (AT&T cable modem) takes about 50min to download. You register using your credit card and they don't ask for too much information there.
The price varies with an average of $3 and the selection is OK, not great. You can see some titles that have been just released for PPV channels. There's no search function, so you have to browse using their categories (action, comedy, blah, blah). In some cases you can see a small trailer for the movie.
They have their own download manager that looks a little bit like those p2p programs. You can see the progress of the download and can launch the player at the end. You have a period of 30 days to watch the movie BUT, only 24 hours to watch it once you hit "play". Of course you can pause or watch it again but only within the 24-hour period after the first play. I think they should give you at least 5 days for that.
The quality is OK, not great but quite alright to watch something for fun. I think it's something around SVCD. My greatest complain is that they only have full screen versions of the movies. No widescreen.
Once you download the movie you have to be connected to start playing it. That's because you have to "authenticate" yourself. So, another bummer. You can't download something to watch on a flight for example. Well, I guess you may be able to start playing at home and then stop it and start again on the plane, but I didn't try that. That would be one advantage over a DVD since you wouldn't be using the DVD-drive thus saving some battery time.
I had problems playing the first movie and had to call support. They gave me a code to rent the movie again but after 3 tries they though there was something wrong with the movie! Bingo, other customer had the same complain. Then I decided to try another movie and had to call support again, which by the way was quite knowledgeable and attentive. I could not download the movie. Here's where I decided I would not use the service again: they recommend that I disabled my firewall (ZoneAlarm) to download it! Even after I did that, it didn't work. The problem seemed to be that I was on my home network on a LinkSys router. They asked me to bypass the router, hook the computer to the cable modem directly and it worked! Here's my complain: I never had to do that for anything, from my company's VPN to my other download services. So if I have to tweak my network/router just to use their service, they've lost a customer. Well, maybe that was just me!
I really liked the idea of being able to download a movie and watch it on my PC, without having to wait for it to come in the mail (NetFlix) or drive to my local video store twice (to pick up and to drop off). I watch the DVDs on my computer anyway, so it doesn't bother me that I don't use a big screen.
But they need to at least work on that download issue and enhance their website (at least include a search button) before I could use their services on a regular basis.
Hope this is helpful to you folks!
Slashdot welcomes reader features and reviews -- thanks to Ismenio for this one.
Bottomline is:
320 x 240 video resolution in Real Video 8, 700 kbit/s constant bitrate, thereof 64 kbit/s for audio - JUST DOESN'T CUT IT.
A DivX of the same movie had something like 584x304 in resolution and was only 25% larger in size.
Nevertheless their download manager worked flawlessly for me and I got download speeds of 250 kbytes/sec. The movie had arrived after 35 minutes.
Video quality was fair, even though the low resolution killed some details.
Bottomline is: Whoever they hired for video encoding just doesn't make the job right.
--- Eat my sig.
Here is an earlier Slashdot article. It mentions that the current database (as of Nov 10) has 200 titles
There is no such thing as a protected file format or a movie that can only play once. If you can play it, you can use a screen capture program to capture the video. If it has sound, you can capture it from the sound card. As long as you can play it, there will be a way to rip it or save it. Yet they keep insisting upon having new "protected" file formats or movies that only play once. This will never work. They much concede the fact that if they let you borrow a movie for your home use, there will be a way to record it forever. Only then, once they admit that, and perhaps start to trust the customer, can they have an economic model for such a service.
Wow. That's amamzing. Accoring to this story at beconnected.org Divx files can be watermarked and rendered obsolete after a set period of time. I wonder why people aren't using that feature? It would seem to make sense. One other thing these companies need to do is to tell people with popular laptops how to connect them to their TV sets. Just about every laptop on the market today has video out, but nobody uses it. I even use wi-fi to deliver movies from my desktop to my laptop/TV all the time. It isn't that hard, but I know Joe Sixpack hasn't thought of it.
I'm glad that the movie industry and distributers are finally embracing the Internet as a distribution medium, instead of fighting it. This sounds a lot better than having to drive all the way to the video store and back, as long as you have broadband. And no late fees! Sounds pretty reasonable to me, and I can watch the movies with a clear conscience.
Software piracy is victimless theft.
First off, the movies only stay good for a month. I don't think your first question is valid.
Plus he made it clear that the file didn't work several times, and the customer service was excellent. Your second question is already answered.
They made you pay more for it?!? That pretty much kills it in my books. I use my toner/ink, my paper, and save them money (less employees), and they CHARGE me for it?
As we say in Canada, "Fuck that noise!"
Robots are everywhere, and they eat old people's medicine for fuel.
"The Slashdot crowd has access to lots and lots and lots of bandwidth, unlike most of the rest of the world. As such, the ~200K streaming rate they're talking about is all most people can sustain right now."
Yes, but this doesn't have to mean bad quality. Take a look at the VP3 codec (that's being wrapped into OGG as we speak) at 200k/sec, and you'll see you can get really close to NTSC quality with 200k/sec. And that's full screen, widescreen will look even better because there's less vertical picture information to compress.
-- sudo.ca
Apart from the downsides mentioned in the review, there are a few that have been pointed out here on /. before. Time to rehash the list, and add some asides.
First of all, not everyone has broadband. There are still alot of users (me included) that are stuck on dial-up due to lack of speed by Comm companies to get the ball rolling. I was once told that DSL would be available within three months by Verizon. One year later, I'm still waiting for DSL. And while Adelphia has done a better job with their PowerLink cable service, it still hasn't reached my town (but is available five miles away: anyone know where we can get some cheap WiFi repeaters?) yet.
The second big deterrant is the fact that this service is limited to Windoze. Can you say DRM is a bad thing? I can. The fact that this service isn't available to *nix, MacOSX (not sure about 9.x and below) or BSD users. Screw that. It's about freedom of choice.
Then there are the network troubles mentioned in the article. Even with broadband, we're expected to compromise our network security and configuration just to download a movie? BS. For the 50 minutes (give or take) that we would have to sit there waiting for the movie to come down, our networks could be compromised. I'm sure alot of us aren't willing to sacrifice the security and structure we spent money and time to build up.
The watch limit is horrible. Just 24 hours? I'd rather drive to my local movie shack and rent a VHS copy which I can keep for a few days. The reccomendation of 5 days in the review would be much better, and worth the pains taken to download it.
Having to connect to authenticate is a bit of a pain, especially for mobile users. After all, you're not going to go WarDriving or pay for special access to a WiFi network just to watch a movie. That adds to the cost, something we economically-minded users don't like. Even open WiFi networks aren't that sound of a notion, because they're not quite available everywhere. While it may be a necessary evil to prevent piracy, it's also a pain in the arse...
I don't think I'll be renting movies from this service anytime soon, if ever. I'd much rather wait for a DVD release and shell out $20 to own it for the rest of my life. Wany my opinion? Screw this...
Blog Prophyts - Right On, Man
If it makes you feel any better, this is what I get:
"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." -- GBS
I think not. I have the NetFlix 4 out program for $24.95 per month. I turnover about 4 movies a week. Using the Movielink service at a similar pace I would pay for 16 to 20 rentals a month at a cost of $48 to $60 per month.
John K. Davis Web Portal: http://JohnKDavis.net