Tuesday, May 4, 2010

Learn About Watching Movies Online

By Cody Bray

It used to be that if you wanted to watch a movie, you either had to go to the theatre or drive to the video store to rent a film. Today, thanks to the internet, it is easier than ever to watch movies online without ever leaving your house. This article will discuss what equipment you need to watch movies online, websites where you can get movies, and will also provide some warnings about what kind of sites to avoid.

Before you can start to watch streaming video, there is some basic equipment you need. Having lost of bandwidth and a high speed connection to the Internet is a must, if you want your videos to play properly. Because streaming files are very heavy, playback will stall if you have a slow connection.

It is also important to have a computer with a fast processor and a good video card, so that your computer can process the incoming streams of data effectively. Modern laptops are designed with digital entertainment in mind, so if you have purchased a new desktop or laptop recently, you should be good to go.

Hundreds of sites exist which feature streaming movie content. One of the biggest players on the streaming video market is Hulu, which offers free streaming movies. Though Hulu has some downsides such as small selection and advertisement placement within the videos, the quality of the video on Hulu is extremely high.

If you want greater selection than is offered by Hulu, many websites allow access to streaming video content in exchange for a low rental fee. Two popular sites that offer this service are Blockbuster and Netflix. Both sites feature newer movies and the fees to watch these movies are comparable to what it would cost to rent them from a video store. In contrast to Hulu, which only has streaming content, both Blockbuster and Netflix will let you store movies on your hard drive for a short period of time (usually between 24 to 48 hours.) Of course, these movie files are carefully protected and it is not possible to permanently save them on DVD or other media devices.

If you are attracted to the thought of Internet video, but turned off by the idea of trying to watch a movie on your tiny computer or laptop screen, it is actually quite easy to transfer video from your computer to your television screen. Older computer systems can be connected to your television set via a serial monitor cable. Essentially, this cable makes your TV act as an external monitor for your computer and everything on your computer can be viewed on your television.

For those of you with high definition televisions and newer computer systems, you can hook your laptop or desktop up to your TV set using an HDMI cable. This works basically the same way as the serial monitor cable, but lets you watch movies in high definition. Computers are also in development which can send video to your television wirelessly.

It is important to practice some caution when looking for streaming video online, because there are a plethora of sites with illegal, pirated content. The majority of these sites are easy to site because they display movies that haven't been released on DVD or that are still in movies theatres. Watching this content is an infringement of intellectual property rights, and even worse, many of these sites hide dangerous spyware programs or viruses which can hurt your computer. In order to be safe rather than sorry, it is better to get your video from a reliable source.

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