At the start, there was video rental. You might pay a visit to your favorite location, either a standalone establishment or possibly a corner of your super market, pay a couple of dollars, and go back home to enjoy a film on your VHS or Betamax (remember those?) VCR.
Then came DVDs. Movie renting became more popular, standalone rental stores may be found every few miles, and since they could not provide a big enough selection, the local supermarkets just about got out of the film rental business.
The home movie-watching market took a leap forward when the cable industry began to offer “Video on Demand.” Now you may choose a movie, view it at your leisure, have it charged to your monthly cable bill, and never need to leave your home. In exchange for this convenience, you were offered a much more limited selection than you would have if you got within your car and drove to the local video store.
The problem of limited selection was quickly solved, on the other hand, with the advent of mail-order movie rental. A subscription to a mail-order movie rental service would allow you to pick from literally tens of thousands of movie titles, set them up in your rental queue, and have them mailed directly to your door. Now, though, the trade-off was time. As soon as you mailed back the movie you had finished watching, it took several days for the following to arrive.
At long last, it looks as even though we might have arrived at the ultimate movies-at-home solution: movie downloading. Whenever you download your movies online, your selection is virtually unlimited, your wait time is minimal, and your costs are affordable.
Depending on the on-line service you choose, there are actually several methods used to get movies online. The first is streaming video. You may stream video either to your computer or to a device attached to your television. You may start to watch full movies online your movie almost instantly, and the price is quite reasonable… in fact, a number of subscription services include unlimited streaming video within your membership package. The one drawback to streaming video is that you cannot save the movie to a DVD or other storage medium and take it with you for watching elsewhere or even in the future; you are limited by viewing it on the device to which it really is streaming.
Another method used to download movies online is a rental concept. Basically, you may download the film to a storage device (computer hard drive, TiVo, even an iPod or video game console), and watch it at your convenience. Since you are only “renting” these movies and not purchasing them, they’re going to expire after a specified period. This will likely vary by service and be anywhere from around 24 hours to 30 days.
Lastly, it’s possible to download complete movies, burn them to DVD, and watch them on your TV, home entertainment center, computer, or anywhere else, as with every movie that you’ve got purchased in a store. Costs because of this may differ widely, and you can find movies priced anywhere from around what you will pay in a retail store, to “clearance bin” pricing, to membership and subscription plans.
In conclusion, downloading your movies online can be the best in twenty-first century convenience. If you’re willing to shop around a bit, you will almost definitely find a movie download plan that may fit your requirements and accommodate your lifestyle.