New online movie service that’s legit. Its called Movielink, allows people to download films thru broadband. It is the industry’s alternative to the distribution of pirated films over peer-peer clients such as Kazaa. Movielink was formed last year and is owned equally by Sony Pictures Entertainment, Universal Studios, Paramount Pictures, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Warner Bros. Movielink charges under $5 dollars for a newer movie, and around $2 for an older movie.
They have security features built into the system to prevent piracy. One the movie is downloaded it only works on that computer and will only stay on it for 30 days before it is auto-deleted. And once played it gets deleted in 24 hours. So in theory it works like a movie rental store.
I for one don’t think this will be successful. Firstly only 25 million people have access to broadband and anti-piracy feature can’t possibly be that hard to break. Sooner or later as this becomes more popular the anti-piracy will be cracked and it’ll end up becoming another source for free movies. Secondly it doesn’t have all the movies that a typical video rental has and the quality will obviously be worse off. The average movie according to them is 500 mbs so only broadband users will be able to download.
I download (with my crappy PacBell dsl, at 35 kbs) so it’ll take me roughly under 4 hours to download that. I think I’ll stick with driving to blockbuster.
Link – www.movielink.com