Web site and all contents (c) Copyright Movies, Music, Games & More Website Reviews 2007, All rights reserved.
Movies, Music, Games & More Website Reviews
The unending struggle to wrestle your movie dollars away from you has been around for a quite a long time, but that all changed with the Internet entering millions of households. In stepped the online movie company Netflix who helps customers select the movies they want to watch while online, and then ships them out to their mailbox within a few days. As a result of the growing popularity of Netflix, smaller mom and pop video stores went out of business and it threatened to take a huge bite out of the big movie rental businesses like Blockbuster and Hollywood Video. Not to be outdone by the likes of Netflix, Blockbuster began fighting back, launching us into the new age of online DVD downloads.
Blockbuster went one better than Netflix when they decided to fight back. Not only would Blockbuster "Total Access" mail DVD rentals directly to their online customers mailbox like Netflix, but customers are given the option of either mailing the movies back for free or they could take them to any Blockbuster store and return them there or exchange them for another movie rental. In a preemptive counterstrike, Netflix is allowing their customers DVD downloads right to their PC's and laptops as an option. Netflix customers no longer have to wait for the movie to show up in their mailbox, and once they have watched their DVD download there is no need to return it. When they are ready to view another film, all they need do is go online and order another DVD download.
This may appear to be a great idea by Netflix, but they are now going against tough competition in CinemaNow, Vongo and Amazon.com Unbox, not to mention that DVD downloads will only work for a particular sector of the online population. Not everyone has a personal computer with enough speed or enough hard drive space on their PC for DVD downloads. Unless you have a very fast computer that is attached to extremely fast Internet broadband connection like cable or DSL, DVD downloads will take quite a while. However, DVD downloads are something someone can do while they are sleeping, at work or out shopping. You need to have enough hard drive space on your computer to store all of your movie downloads, but external hard drives are very affordable these days. One downfall of getting DVD downloads from Netflix is you will only be able to play them a few times and you won’t be able to copy them.
One more downfall of the DVD downloads is that your PC is not the ideal way to watch a movie if you have a large family. However, there are ways to connect your computer to your TV so you can watch your movie downloads on the TV's much bigger screen. Today's HDTV's even come with a computer connection built in for just that purpose. However, despite a couple of downfalls, downloading DVD's may become the popular choice over renting DVD's, no matter what kind of plan is offered. As computers become faster and more powerful, people will begin downloading DVD's at a faster rate, which means DVD downloads will soon be downloaded in mere minutes.
Soon, DVD downloads may work a lot like Pay Per View channels do on a TV. They would be used by people who want to watch a specific movie but can't or don't want to run down to the local Blockbuster to rent a movie or by movie lovers who have to travel often. Anytime a flight is delayed, passengers need only download a movie to watch on their laptops while they wait to board their plane. When that comes into fruition, I wonder if Netflix and Blockbuster will still be in the thick of it all?
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Neil Gerstein is an expert author who writes about multiple topics. You can read some of his articles on his following websites:
