Comments on: Movielink and CinemaNow: Hardly Worth the Effort? No, Movielink and CinemaNow Suck

By: Bart

Bart — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 06:12:15 +0000

WARNING!!!! Read the fine print about purchasing videos..at cinemanow

4.3.3 ………Once you have downloaded a working copy of a piece of Retained Content we will not refund your purchase price or provide another copy of said piece of Retained Content in the event that your computer crashes, your hard drive fails, the file becomes corrupt or in the event that said piece of Retained Content does not play, for whatever reason.

This means you will be required to maintain your PC forever (unlikely) to have unlimited usage. Better buy a DVD at least when you buy it you can watch it any place you like…..

I even redownloaded a movie and while in download status click the watch now and it told me I was screwed DRM SUCKS and any company that uses it sucks as well.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 08 Nov 2006 18:16:00 +0000

Now they both are bombing for those of us that upgraded to Media Player 11. Both can’t handle the 11s DRM Licenses and so they just DIE. Then since neither service has any real service, now one is there to help correct the issue and the website is void of any help too.

So you (I) paid for nothing by any hour and a half of aggrevation. STAY AWAY FOR THESE SERVICES. I used Netflix and it is so much better.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Tue, 15 Aug 2006 14:08:00 +0000

You people should check out http://www.reeltimetv.net – video quality is unreal on large screens

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sat, 27 May 2006 11:47:00 +0000

I would like to add that even though Movielink and Cinema Now are highly limited…Vongo is even worse. You are paying for vastly less content than those two services AND you can copy cable broadcast content FREE legally on your PVR or PC video card, with TV inputs, and put it onto your laptop with ease. Why pay for what you can do for free…and with ALL the cable content…not just Starz. Vongo charges for what you are legally entitled to do which is copy broadcast content free for personal use. Plus they encode at low rates…so you even can do it better by copying through your cable service. Also, instead of paying for a crappy video download with limited right…just buy the DVD and play it…hmmm…we already know that. haha

By: A. Cassidy Napoli

A. Cassidy Napoli — Wed, 17 May 2006 11:11:00 +0000

Bittorrent is great, but it doesn't solve every problem associated with movie distribution over the internet, and could potentially even add issues.
For example, the protocol demands that the downloading clients give back bits. Many ISPs are set up so download bandwidth is much greater than upload bandwidth. If many many people were bittorrent-ing movie downloads legally it would greatly affect the networks they belong to. And if the technological and business issues were resolved at that level, it would still require that the individual users be willing to share their network connections.

And bittorrent really only helps when everyone wants the same file. If I am looking for something obscure or underappreciated, and no one else (or relatively few people) are hosting that particular file, then I get no gain over just downloading direct from a single server.

For maximum effectiveness it also requires proper configuring of personal firewalls and network routers, which is admittedly getting easier with UPnP and other modern network components, but still presents a major hurdle for many users who just want things to 'just work'.

I absolutely agree with the poor offerings both services now provide in terms of content, format, distribution, and use rights. But looking at it from an objective, technological standpoint, as much as possible, I don't believe there is any simple solution to the issues.