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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.
This won't be ready for prime time until someone builds a set top box DVD player that will plug into a router and do this automatically (with minimal configuration). The AOL of movies, if you will...
A good application for MiniITX and LinuxBIOS?
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
does it work with the linux real player?
I remember seeing an advertisement for movietickets.com when I saw the new Bond film and several times previous to that in the past year. It seems to have completely flopped here; my local theatre isn't even set up to accept the online tickets and lacks the barcode scanners which are necessary to admit a customer. I actually saw a family get turned away after having purchased tickets to a 'participating' theatre. Is this another dot-bomb, or does anyone have positive stories about this service to report?
Sex - Find It
I live in Calgary Canada.
And at the beginning of last month (Octobre) they opened a new service called shawondemand (www.shawondemand.net) where you can order a movie by the internet and as long as you have internet and digital cable through them (I know... *cough* monopoly). You can order a movie online, and watch it through your calbe box hooked up to your TV INSTANTLY. It has play, pause, rew. ff. and all the basic features, you also get it for 24 hours to play as many times as you want.
The only quams (sp?) that I have about the service is the lack of new titles they have (sure they got LOTR, Blade II, 40 days/nights/ and bunch other titles, But you watch a movie a month, and that's all on there list thats appealing. oh, also all the adult you can imagine, that rivals there normal movies), and the lack of widescrean. But all in all, it's a cool service here, also you can watch music videos, trailers and stuff for there videos for free.
It'll be nice to see how there new revisions are the service go.
CowboyNeal ROCKS!
-isolenz
I rented "I Married an Ax Murderer" from the site and it worked great, and the first time out. It was late at night, it was cold and snowing outside and I did NOT feel like driving to Blockbuster. Plus I'm horrible at returning movies and usually have late fees on my account. So for those reasons, I like it. The quality was marginal, but the convenience is great. I got my much needed chuckle out of watching Mike Myers do his scottish father's "look at his head...it's a big as Sputnik" bit.
So MovieLink may not be for all, but it serves my occasional purpose.
...and the copy-protection that the client uses is a joke.
The client purges files 24 hours after they are first viewed or after 30 days of sitting on the hard drive. The process that actually performs the deletion is designed to look like a Microsoft application in the task manager, which I thought was pretty sneaky. However, it's very easy to bypass the deletion by simply killing the process, copying the file, or playing around with the system clock. The client tries to hide the files by giving them random names, making them invisible, etc etc, but as you can imagine, it's not too hard to find a 500 mb file sitting on your hard drive.
Movielink is putting all their money on the DRM that is enabled with each movie file, which supposedly is smart enough to know when the system clock has been messed with. We didn't have any movie files with DRM enabled, so I can't say how well that works. Hopefully for Movielink it performs better than the client itself. Has anyone here who has played with this service also fooled around with the DRM? How fool-proof is it?
I'll form my OWN solar system! With blackjack! And hookers!
I tried it... but they need some improvments before i will try it again.
Prices: Compared to DVD rental at blockbuster... movielink is sometimes more expensive. You dont even get close to DVD quality. There is a convenice factor in the price and i expect that.
Quailty: Movie link is really poor. i dont like movies that are 320x240 standard. I did email them about this. they told me that in the near future they will make available widescreen movies. Hopefully at a res higher than 320x240.
Serivice: This is probably where they score the highest. I had no trouble paying for and downloading the movie i wanted to watch. I had mistyped my email address when i signed up and customer service made it really easy for me to fix that.
So in the end. I really think that movielink has potential. If they get less afraid that someone will copy thier movies.
In America we are imprisoned by our fear of them.
I dunno, but with all the ISPs whining about how much traffic things like Kazaa use, I wonder if they would be too pleased at this kind of thing catching on? With each movie being 500mb + thats going to be an awful lot of data whizzing around...
I wrote this on my site a few days ago. I'll post it here just for the hell of it.
Last night I felt like watching a pay-per-view movie. So I switched on the tv and there was nothing but crap on. Then I thought of what movie I should download from kazaa but that wouldn't be done for a couple days at least. So then I figured I would give Movielink a try. Its a service that lets you download new movies for $4 a pop and old ones for $2.
So I download and pay for We Were Soldiers. The download app informs me that I have 30 days to start watching it, and then 24 hours to watch it once I start it. That's a decent amount of time for a pay per view price. So every thing is smooth up till I start watching it. The video and audio quality is worse than most downloads from kazaa. The sound is sometimes tinny and is very quite when its just talking, extremely loud during action scenes. The video quality also blows. Its very blurry if your sitting close to your monitor, it looks ok from 6 feet but not perfect..
Bottom line is that its not worth $4 for shitty movies that you have to sit in your computer chair for 2 hours to watch.
Hacker Media
When this was first posted to Slashdot I went and "rented" Harry Potter. I'll save you all the review of the quality of the video, and get to what most of us care about: how easy is it to circumvent the DRM technology they're using?
h is_Folder.txt", and this folder is secret...using top-secret "Hidden Folder Attributes" technology it cannot be viewed by your average Joe...but, me, being a 1337 haxx0r was able to click on the folder properties and change the folder to a viewable one...phew! I've made it through their first protection scheme.
;-) / DVD-R for me. ;-)
In summary: not very. As someone mentioned previously, the file (along with the DRM license keys) sits in a folder (the default location is C:\Program Files\Movielink\MovielinkManager\data\content). But be careful! It has a warning in this folder - "_Please_Do_NOT_Delete_Or_Change_Any_Files_From_T
Once I found the file I copied it to one of my other drives, RAR'd it, and then burned it to a CD-R so I could "play" with it after it expired.
Flash forward...24 hours are up...the file in C:\Program Files\Movielink\MovielinkManager\data\content is deleted automagically by their client app. I attempt to play the file - no love. Of course, since they use DRM which requires a "phone home" to play it, it doesn't work. I tried setting the clock back - no love. All is lost? Well..maybe...I did some googling and all I could come up with was an app that removed DRM from WMA (A for Audio, not V for Video) files that use DRM version 2 (it was written by "Beale Screamer" back in Oct. 2001)...I queued up the app (FreeMe.exe) and unfortunately I didn't have any luck...the new keys are longer and Microsoft has since fixed the "bug" that FreeMe.exe exploited at that time.
In the end...I was thwarted...I could only watch my movie for the 24 hours I paid for ($5 to boot, arrrr!)...I guess it is back to NetFlix / DivX
I consider myself a rather devoted movie fan. I go to the theaters about once a week, and I currently own about 120 movies on VHS, about 30 on Laserdisc, and about 50 movies on DVD. I have a full list online.
I would never go for a deal like this, even if it supported MacOS X.
I have gotten to the point where I only rent a movie a few times *a year*. Owning is far easier. Blockbuster is slowly catching on to the idea that the used DVD market is going to be huge, similar to the new VHS market (and the VHS rental industry as it used to be). New DVD sales are also going to be large. Walk into any Bolockbuster and notice the growth in their used and new DVD for sale sections.
I buy most of my movies on DVD for about $8-$10, and most of my movies on VHS for $3-$6. Compare these prices against a one-time watch fee of $3, with quality that probably approaches VHS on my nice television.
My thoughts - I would rather buy a movie for 2x-3x what it coest to rent provided I have a decent notion that the movie is watching more than once. If that is the case, the cost to buy competes directly with renting it ($8 to buy a DVD, or rent twice for $4 each time).
(As far as watching movies in the theater goes - I justify that since the theater has things to offer than I cannot get at home - a huge screen and an atmosphere of being at the theater)
- (c) 2018 Hank Zimmerman