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MovieLink 2004's Top Film Download Service, So Far
An anonymous reader writes "The NPD Group has released some research on the fledgling pay digital movie download services. Numbers for the first half of this year show MovieLink as number one with a third of total users followed by MovieFlix with 13% of the market. It's a very small market though, with purchases equalling only 0.3% of the total movie market (and nowhere near the numbers of those trading on the free P2P services). Also of note, 80% of users are male and the top films purchased are sci-fi and fantasy."
Oh wait, they're talking about the legal services.
Also of note, 80% of users are male What about the 20% left, does it include dolphin and whales ?
Movielink is not catering to Europeans.
MovieFlix doesn't seem to have any decent movies anywhere.
Back to mlDonkey and Bittorrent...
X.
They're probably trying to install Gator onto my machine anyways...
In general, I find that online renting of movies still lacking. They charge you more per download than if you were to go to a store to rent it. Second the view period is usually only 24 hours. And if these two factors are not enough to turn you away from a pay to rent service, the video quality is severly lacking compared to the DVD version (I have a 3mbps internet connection, a 2GB version of a movie shouldn't be a problem).
There are also the questions of compatibility. Do you need special software for Windows? Will it play on a Mac, Linux? Probably not. I think this sums of the situation quite nicely:
Sorry, but in order to enjoy the Movielink service you must use Internet Explorer 5.0 or higher, which supports certain technologies we utilize for downloading movies. Click here to get the latest version of Internet Explorer.
They are probably using some weird activeX components to launch a movie playing applicaiton.
...hence the following message upon visiting their site with Firefox 1.0PR:
"Sorry, but in order to enjoy the Movielink service you must use Internet Explorer 5.0 or higher, which supports certain technologies we utilize for downloading movies. Click here to get the latest version of Internet Explorer.
We do not anticipate supporting Mozilla or Netscape in the near future."
No thanks, I'll take my movies non-DRM'd to death, thank you.
*follows X back to Shareaza and Bittorrent*
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
On MovieLink's site, they say "Watch now or up to 30 days later" while describing the benifits of their service. How do they accomplish this time limit? Does anyone know?
http://www.mp3newswire.net.mirror.sytes.org/storie s/2004/moviedownloads.html
Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
They almost just had a new customer, until i saw this at the top of my screen.
"Sorry, but in order to enjoy the Movielink service you must use Internet Explorer 5.0 or higher, which supports certain technologies we utilize for downloading movies. Click here to get the latest version of Internet Explorer.
We do not anticipate supporting Mozilla or Netscape in the near future."
Oddly enough, I dont anticipate them getting any of my money in the near future.
Pay anywhere between $1.99 and $4.99 so that you can use your own bandwidth to download a movie. You have ONE 24 hour window to watch the movie. You can't burn it to DVD. You have to pay to watch it again after the window is over.
Netflix is a better deal.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Sorry, but in order to enjoy the Movielink service you must have Windows 98/SE, ME, 2000 or XP, which support certain technologies we utilize for downloading movies.
We do not anticipate supporting Mac or Linux in the near future.
I guess I won't be enjoying the Movielink service in the near future either.
Don't feel bad. They just modded you Flamebate because you were hitting too close to home.
Wow, with movie greats like "Zontar Thing From Venus" and "Matango Fungus of Terror" I just don't see why MovieFlix isn't #1.
Of course, NPD released this information to drive industry interest in its services, so there's no hard data really given. This isn't a "study" by any means. Notice how there's no mention of methodology, like whether the survey was multiple choice only or whether participants could write in other names for companies offering VOD, like Greencine. It also doesn't state whether this survey was done independently or whether it was sponsored by one of the two listed companies, as many NPD surveys seem to be.
Get off my launchpad!
Also of note, 80% of users are male and the top films purchased are sci-fi and fantasy.
Anybody else supprised that pr0n aint toppin the list?
Like I'd be willing to ever pay for films like " Pleasure craft loaded with babes crashes into a remote island controlled by a mad ex-Nazi scientist who transforms pretty girls into rubber faced Frankensteins." or "An experimental rocket containing radiation contaminated wasps crashes in Africa making giant killer wasps that run amok."
:D Okay, okay, those were good times, but DVDs aren't that expensive these days and they stay on your shelf. I'd just move along.
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
This service is great for someone who is in college and if their college has a really good connection and they also have access to that connection "privately" as most sysadmins will not allow anything as huge as the 800mb+ files to cross their system. I have a pretty fast, stable, cable modem, and it would take me several hours to download one movie, so it's not really a "gimme" yet. Once bandwidth gets cheaper and more readily available, you will see these services offered directly from your cable company. Most of the movies offerred you can just get off of PPV anyway.
"Jeremy, you need to get to an internet cafe and cut and paste some appropriate sentiments about me from the world wide
Mantango's suppose to be a classic. It's actually a Toho monster movie(one of the few non-Kaiju flicks). I imagine the dub leaves something to be desired though. They probably tried too hard to Americanize the thing...
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
I've watched 3 movies so far and even though the regular prices are too high [but if you go through real.movielink.com they have a small number of movies $1 every week, which is how I watched mine], the limitations (24h after first view, IE, windows, etc...) are painful,... It does work suprisingly well.
I have a 100inches front projection home theater and it looks almost as good as a good DVD, and the files are only ~540Mb(*)... They must be using some pretty powerful codecs (better than dvd's mpeg2)
*: Or twice that for the "EQ" (higher quality) but again, standard quality was actually pretty good
Just my experience
you go girl
doesn't matter. the slashdot crowd wouldn't use movielink anyway since they don't offer tentacle rape hentai
I've been struck with a thought about how movies may be in the future on computer. Say you download Mean Girls, or something like that, and there's a scene where good ole Lindsay Lohan is eating a something from pizza hut or something. A viewer of the movie who's watching it on their computer could click on the pizza box and it'd automatically link to some sort of pizza hut/mean girls special....or even select ones would have a free pizza as a prize or something. Ummm...that's my idea, nobody steal it.
http://www.commaecho.com
The South-Koreans have a nice service as well vod.naver.com. The service is very cheap compared to those mentioned above, only about 2000 won for new movies (which is about $1,50). The quality is near DVD and is distributed by a p2p like network, on which i usually get speeds above 150KB. Besides lots of Korean movies (sometimes with English subtitles) they also have a gazillion American movies.
I want to rent games online. I also want to rent movies online. Until a service exists wherein I can do both these things with the same subscription, nobody gets my business.
Hear that Netflix?!
My English teacher once told me that two positives don't make a negative. Two words for her: Yeah, right.
Apple had to serve hundreds of millions of songs before economies of scale started kicking in, before they could even make a small profit.
Now replace 4 MB songs with 600 MB movies. Even if MPAA fees were less outrageously high than RIAA fees, how can they expect to turn a profit?
If they want to be a serious competition to Blockbuster, they'll have to have a pretty large product range. This means storing and serving petabytes of movies: huge costs - even when storage and bandwidth costs going down - which I'm pretty sure they can't cover charging $5 a movie.
The RIAA wanted to replace p2p flows through unidirectional flows (e.g. iTMS to customer only) in order to keep tight control of what is being downloaded on the net. However, this is materially impossible for movies. The only cost-effective way of distributing large files is over p2p.
Of course, giving away free dvd players can't be good for business.
...are available from the handful of TorrentBits sites that offer stats on the popularity of movie torrents. I'll bet that the number of completed torrents for a given movie would track post-release DVD sales. Is there a way for the public to buy/sell future or options on movie releases? Any chance that entertainment products could ever be directly publicly owned?
http://tinyurl.com/4ny52
Plus, a decent number of college students have a larger library of DVDs than books. Meaning that it's often even easier to borrow the DVD rather than buy or rent it.
I could be wrong though. There might someday be a movie download service that offers
(A) A lot of people don't have the bandwidth
(B) Movies don't have the same repeat value as music, where you typically listen to a song over and over. You can watch a movie and then not touch it again for another 5-10 years.
(C) For 10-12 bucks more you can own the movie and watch it as much as you want on any DVD player you want.
(D) Portable DVD players aren't cheap, and so movies are not easily accessable outside of the TV or computer screen.
(E) TVs typically have better resolution then computer screens, and movie watching is often a "family" event. Thus it makes more sense for most people to download movies on to your TV then on to your computer.
All of the above are reasons why the online movie business is not going to take off in the same way the online music business did. There are way more challenges to making online movie downloads profitable due to the way people want to watch their movies.
Mine went like this:
You just lost my business.
I've used Movielink to rent about a dozen movies. For me, it beats going to the video store. At the video store, I can never find what I want, it's either unavailable or already rented. I can check Movielink without leaving my desk, and though the often don't have what I want, it's easy to check.
As many have pointed out, the $4.99 rental fee is a bit steep. But while some folks may be good about returning movies, it seems about half the time I end up paying a late fee, so it's not really any more expensive for me than a DVD rental at Blockbuster.
I don't see it as an alternative to Netflix. Netflix is a great deal if you watch a lot of movies, or want to watch movies that are harder to find. Movielink is best for the occasional rental of mainstream films.
Movielink has a small selection, but it's easy to find out if they have something I'm interested in. The downloads are very quick over my 3Mb cable modem, typically completing in less than an hour, and watchable (streaming) a few minutes after starting the download.
The 24 hours limit is a bit of a pain, but importantly, the 24 hours doesn't start until you start watching the movie. Honestly, most new movies aren't worth watching more than once anyways.
It's too bad that Movielink requires Windows and Windows Media Player, but if this type of movie rental becomes more popular, they will be forced to support other platforms. The movie studios are resisting internet delivery of movies, thus Movielink has a pretty small selection.
Also of note, 80% of users are male
The other 20% signed up using their mother's credit card...
When modding "Informative", please make sure it both has a source and IS actually informative.
movielink has set up a deal with howardstern.com to make his uncensored E shows available online. I wonder how this adds to their download count and with the 80% male group.
Flat rate services generally have problems with their models. They never seem to suspect that once unlimited anything is available to their clients, they often start pushing those unlimits.
Netflix in particular quietly stiffs their customers who try to take full advantage of their supposedly unlimited rentals. Sure, when you start out you're getting two sets of movies a week. But then gradually they start getting "sent" and "recieved" slower and slower, until you're getting only one or less. Mind you, this usually happens after you get a series of emails asking how many days it took to recieve your movies. If you ask about it, NF just blames the post office, although they have no explanation as to how the postal service could suddenly become slower for just your mail to and from Netflix, regardless of whether it was sent from your home, post office box, or post office itself. It couldn't be their fault - that would be false advertising.
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
I've had good success with uwatchdvds.com, poor service from both MovieFlix and Hustler. In both cases it was bandwidth issues. Don't like the DRM but was willing to give it a try.
I bet if Apple does movies some day that everyone will say wow Apple made this huge break throught! ;) Well, I don't think they will make a huge break through or anything but I bet they will claim to be the first when they are not. Movielink could make a good play on the market if they do a few things(written more or less as a comment I will also copy and paste in a e-mail to Movielink):
Increase viewing time to more then 24 hours. That way you can load up the movies before a trip and not have to depend on having high speed to get something to watch in your room.
Support browsers and OS's other then Windows. The browser thing especially. More and more people are using Mozilla. Get used to it Movielink. It's only going to get worse before it gets better for you. Support Mac OSX as well. Just come up with some non-unobtrusive DRM on top of MPEG4 and you should be able to support the majority of OS's out there. Take a hint from Apple and follow what they did. Alot of geeks don't bitch too much about iTMS and even a few have figured out how to make it work on Linux.
We really do want to download movies legally and not have to use eMule(at least I do...I am not a cheapskate). It's less hassle, we don't have to question the quality (much). The way you, Movielink, has decided to do business does not get us excited. Also, saying from the get go you won't ever support anything other then Windows, IE and for those in other countrys only the US is limiting your market. Even with the DRM, more people would try it if you got rid of the 24 hour period and supported other browsers. Also, by supporting other OS's it make it easier for anyone to view them on devices other then a laptop. Creative or Archos could include the DRM you need to play them in their devices (again, do it like Apple has doen the iPod).
Until those things happen, you won't grow much beyond where your at now. People who do buy these portable media devices want to use them to view it. That way you don't have to have a computer and you can hook the Video out to the hotel TV and watch them.
For now, I will stick to either DVD's or DVD rips stored on a external hard disk. They play on my mac as well as my pc and I can watch them on a big screen with little pain.
Gorkman
Why is this all a problem? I don't see why I can't expect this.
Icky pr0n
Because it's unrealistic. The cost of all that would far exceed any price that geeks deem "reasonable".
...except its free!
In fact, the only ones missing are the encoding format (which vary) and the gaurenteed fast connection.
horray for p2p.
Hey, you didnt say _legally_ in your post.
The best way to go, and it's even semi-legal (depending on what you do with your copies after watching them): 1. Use NetFlix and get some movies. 2. Use DVDShrink (or whatever free DVD copy tool you have on your platform) on the discs 3. Return the movies to NetFlix the day after you received them 4. Eventually watch what you copied (either to your hard drive or to DVD-+R), or in my case, stockpile them and never watch them... :-P
5. More NetFlix DVDs arrive -- goto step 2...
MovieLink's Terms and Conditions are great reading!
... display ... to any third party"
Movie will be downloaded to your hard drive and cannot be moved.
It must be viewed with proprietary windows based software.
Once you have started viewing, you have 24hrs until it is deleted without warning.
C5: "You may not
Oh but best of all: C7: You may not: use the Services or Content for any commercial or illegal purpose;
Sorry, but in order to enjoy the Movielink service you must use Internet Explorer 5.0 or higher, which supports certain technologies we utilize for downloading movies. Click here to get the latest version of Internet Explorer. We do not anticipate supporting Mozilla or Netscape in the near future.
Bring on the next monopoly by those thoughtless savages...