Movielink review.

I tried the service all the movie companies combined on to deliver movies digitally. I was actually pretty impressed with the user experience. Other than being not available on the Mac, etc., which didn't affect me, the whole thing worked rather well, from sign up to download and watching. And it wasn't an especially easy task they had to accomplish.


The cons were the obvious: The movies cost too much. $4.99 for new releases and $2.99 for older movies is silly, since it's signifcantly more than I pay at my corner video shop for a DVD. It would be less silly if there was some advantage to watching on my computer, but the experience is obviously much, much worse. They advertise the movies as being "full screen." And, well, you can blow them up to full screen, but they're then pixelated and distorted, as you would expect.


The worst part was the time limit. You have 24 hours after you start a movie to finish it. After that, it's automatically deleted from your computer. I watched about 15 minutes of the movie I downloaded at 8pm one evening. The next evening, at 8pm, I was at my computer and a little window popped up that said the movie had been deleted, thanks! I felt like I had just been pickpocketed. Even if I was planning to finish the movie that night, and I had started at 7pm, instead of 8, I wouldn't have been finished with it in 24 hours. The time limit is too short by at least half. What's more, they gain nothing by having such a strict limit. People will just get pissed. Maybe they'll figure these problems out. If they don't, the service will not take off any time soon. The usual arrogance of Hollywood does not deem this likely, but we'll see.