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."

Comments

Re:What about...

[AoT]

Its not the services that are illegal, its what everyone's doing on them.

Internet Explorer Only

[zapf]

Looks like I won't be switching to Movelink soon. BitTorrent doesn't have the same nasty requirement.

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.

They're probably trying to install Gator onto my machine anyways...

Re:Internet Explorer Only

[adrew]

I got a different one using Safari on OS X 10.3.4.

"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."

Re:Back to P2P

[Celt]

You got that right!

"Thanks for your interest in Movielink, the leading source for movies delivered directly over the internet. We want you to enjoy our powerful movie download experience, but it is presently unavailable to users outside of the United States"

What a extremely helpfull site, can't even browse the bloody thing!
And the above is when I tried to access movielink.com directly

That shit is stupid.

[Lord Kano]

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

Re:Back to P2P

[ImaLamer]

I assumed that mlDonkey version you speak of is for Linux, but if not here goes:

Try Starz! on Demand, it's a subscription based service that lets you download hundreds of movies a month. Basically every movie shown on Starz is available for download. Plus you can watch Starz.

Bad thing: It uses Helix, RealPlayer's DRM technology and last time I checked wasn't available for Linux (hmmm... I wonder why). Requires substantial bandwidth. Can't keep the movies, they expire after 2 weeks.

Good thing: It's a good service, good movies and good quality too, at about 500 MB per movie. Good for someone like me who doesn't want to pay for cable or satellite, but will pay for a nice movies.

I used the trial and stuck with it because it allowed me to watch a movie a day, when I wanted to.

Surprisingly good quality

[_dl_]

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

Re:Movie Link's "Watch now or up to 30 days later"

[bdptcob]

I downloaded a couple of movies from movielink only because they were free when signing up for crappy sbc dsl. Movielink installs a proprietary "downloader." This downloader connects to their database when watching the movie, I guess to verify download date and if it has been watched. I tried to watch my movie with allowing it to connect to the internet and it was a no go.