Cinemanow: High-Def CinemaNow is announcing a new version of it’s CinemaNow website. At present the service offers over 4,000 movies for download and is integrated into Windows Media Center where you can watch movies rented directly from them on your Media Center PC. Unfortunately I still cannot get excited about this news or CinemaNow as a service. The movies that I’ve seen in the past suffer from picture degradation and a muddy feel much like most of the analog TV on Media Center when compared to HDTV alternatives.
Although CinemaNow has over 4,000 movies to rent they only have 11 HDTV movies to rent with such thrilling titles as “Coral Reef Adventure” and “Dolphins” and “The Living Sea”. Why would I even rent any of these when I’ve got HD Discovery and a TiVo PVR running full time as well as tons of much more interesting movies and shows from HDTV HBO and Showtime on my DirecTV HDTV TiVo.
Although I understand the cost, licensing and bandwidth issues of offering HDTV programming via a service like CinemaNow, until I can get a better selection of premium HDTV content, it is not the place for me.
Thanks, eHomeUpgrade!