T
his roundup is a study in compro-
mises. All these services are superior
to what the typical cable company
has to offer—with Comcast serving as the
defi nition of “typical.” Each one is also bet-
ter than what you’ll get from satellite TV
provider DirecTV, which has the same pay-
per-view movies, but they’re available only
at certain times. The other major satellite
service, Dish Network, recently began offer-
ing a genuine on-demand service on its
DVR tuners equipped with Ethernet ports,
but the future of that device is clouded by
an ongoing lawsuit.
And that brings us back to the services
in this roundup. BitTorrent has great tech-
nology, but there’s nothing to recommend
its legitimate movie-downloading service
(although we did fi nd some great old mov-
ies for free!). The service is a pain to browse
from the couch, you can’t transfer movies
to portable devices, and BitTorrent’s library
was very light on new releases. We likewise
recommend avoiding Movielink—at least
until Blockbuster fi gures out what it’s going
to do with the service.
If you want to rent the latest fi lms and
buy TV episodes that can be transferred to
a portable device, CinemaNow, Amazon’sUnbox, and Apple’s iTunes are your best bet
(iTunes if you own an iPod and CinemaNow
and Unbox if you own a PlaysForSure
device). We can’t recommend CinemaNow’s
subscription offerings, however, unless you
want access to its adult-fi lm library.
If you demand high defi nition, Vudu
has the best solution—provided the movie
you want is available in HD. Vudu’s image
quality is very good, but its SD mode is no
better than what you’d get from your cable
or satellite provider’s set-top box—and its
HD content isn’t nearly as eye popping as
what you’d get from a Blu-ray disc. You also
need to take the cost of the hardware into
account and the fact that you can’t stream
the video from one room to another, transfer
it to any other device, or burn purchased
content to disc.
Apple’s iTunes with the Apple TV and
Microsoft’s Xbox Live Marketplace come
in next, overall, but both services offer
HD movies in only 720p—and both their
movie catalogs fall short when it comes
to the latest releases. They require new
hardware, too (unless you already own an
Xbox 360, that is). We really like the TiVo
integration and user-friendly DRM that
Amazon’s Unbox service offers, but wewish the company had HD content. If we
were to buy a downloadable SD movie,
we’d get it from Amazon.
And that leaves us with Vongo. This
subscription-only service was the fi rst one
we tried, and we were sure we wouldn’t
like it. Not because its image quality was
any worse than the competition’s—in fact,
it offered the best WMV-encoded video of
anybody—but because it doesn’t offer HD
or new releases for rent. But the more we
thought about it, the more we liked the idea
of watching as many movies as we want
to on demand and on up to three devices
(including non-iPod handhelds). It’s almost
like having a Netfl ix account, but with real
streaming and portability options. If we
could rent new releases and TV episodes, it
would be the clear winner.
The biggest attraction all these servic-
es have in common is the ability to watch
movies on demand (or almost on demand;
if you have a slow Internet connection, you
might as well go to the corner store). The
only true no-compromises solution, how-
ever, is buying or renting old-fashioned
discs. Buy Blu-ray discs if you want image
quality or DVDs if portability is your main
concern.The Closing Credits
Here’s where we make sense of the whole downloading-service scene
38 MAXIMUMPC | MAY 08 | http://www.maximumpc.com
XBOX LIVE
AMAZON MARKET-
UNBOX BITTORRENT CINEMANOW ITUNES MOVIELINK VONGO VUDU PLACE
BUSINESS MODEL Rent or Buy Rent or Buy Rent, Buy, Rent or Buy Rent or Buy Subscription Rent or Buy Rent
or Subscription and Rent
VIDEO-ENCODE FORMAT WMV WMV WMV MPEG-4; H.264 WMV WMV MPEG-4 WMV
MONTHLY SUBSCRIPTION N/A N/A $8 to $30 (optional) N/A N/A $10 N/A N/A
PRICE
PRICE PER MOVIE RENTAL $4 $3 to $4 $2 to $4 $3 to $5 $3 to $4 $1 to $4 (if not $3 to $6 $3 to $6
included in
subscription)
TV EPISODE $2 $2 $2 $2 $2 $2 $2 $2
PURCHASE PRICE
MOVIE PURCHASE PRICE $10 to $15 $10 to $20 $9 to $20 $10 to $15 $8 to $20 N/A $10 to $20 N/A
HARDWARE REQUIRED PC or TiVo PC PC Apple TV PC PC Vudu Movie Box Xbox 360
w/hard drive
MEDIA CENTER No Yes Yes No Yes Yes No Yes
EXTENDER COMPATIBLE?
RESOLUTIONS SUPPORTED 480p Up to 1080p 480p Up to 720p 480p 480p Up to 1080p/24 720p
PORTABLE DEVICES PlaysForSure iPod or iPhone PlaysForSure iPod or iPhone None PlaysForSure None None
SUPPORTED
BURN PURCHASED No Yes, with restrictions Yes (limited titles) No Yes, but only No No No
CONTENT TO DISC? as a data fi le
VERDICT 7 4 6 6 5 7 7 6DOWNLOAD
SERVICES
MOVIE GUIDE