Thursday, May 13, 2010

A List Of The Best Movie Downloads Services

By Edward Bowen

We're a wired culture with the ability to satisfy and curiosity, question, or whim at a moment's notice. Many times multitasking has the inclusion of background music, taking time to social network, or watching your favorite movie while you work. You don't have to go to the video store anymore to get what you want and even the expense of pay per view is a thing of the past. The internet has democratized what we can do with entertainment and the prices are lower than ever.

The largest and most popular movie service is NetFlix which allows customers to subscribe, for little money, to a service that will deliver movies either to your door or through your computer. It is the quintessential model for on demand service. As more and more families have transformed their living rooms into entertainment oasis', the internet has come up and met the demand to stay home and have your fun on your own terms.

On demand videos stream either through your TV cable box, a digital video recorder so that you can watch later, or the internet. And like with watching movies you own, these streaming videos include all of the controls that you're used to like pausing, stopping and skipping forward and backward during a movie.

However, as with music file sharing, there are peer to peer network systems that can send large movie files through a bit torrent, basically offering any movie ever made for free. The dangers of this illegal file sharing is the risk of having adware or spyware downloading into your computer, putting your personal information at risk and slowing down the performance of your computer. Finding a legitimate movie downloads site is not difficult and should be used instead of the free sites because of the protection that they offer from viruses.

Some of the most well known movie download sites outside of NetFlix are Apple's iTunes, Starz's Vongo, Amazon's Unbox, CinemaNow, and Movie link. The disadvantage to Apple's iTunes outstrips it's advantages which include only that you can watch your downloaded movies on one computer and your video ipod. Also, there are no rental fees, what you buy on iTunes is yours, it is like buying a movie and with prices ranging from 9.99 to 14.99 it's better to go to the store and buy the DVDs you want.

Because you are only able to watch your downloads on an iPod or your computer, the price is exorbitant for the limited number of venues to watch your movie. Also, iTunes does not offer free movie selections and, for families, it has weak parental controls and no subscription or rental options. It's a hard pill to swallow to be forced to purchase a movie rather than just spending a little to watch one.

The Starz library of films is what powers it's download service Vongo and, as such, it does not offer current movie titles. However, being a rent-only site makes it more palatable to watch whatever you want without having to commit to a high price. The current subscription price for Vongo is 9.95 a month.

Amazon's Unbox has no subscription fee and has the ability to work across multiple platforms, PCs, and devices. The image quality is one of the best among movie downloading sites and includes all recent movies and TV shows for prices comparable to the neighborhood video store.

CinemaNow is one of the best, if not the best, downloading service on the web for the ability to get over 4,000 movies in five different ways including: renting, buying, a subscription service, free, and most impressively the ability to burn the movies you watch onto a DVD. The ability to burn movies makes CinemaNow a cut about the rest.

MovieFlix is one of the cheapest in terms of subscribing at 7.95 a month. The image quality is not the best, and they don't have the newest movies in stock, but there's a decent collection of free movies. Whatever your needs and platforms, finding the right movie downloading site is an easy proposition.

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