Comparing 6 Movie Download Websites

Here's some useful information for all of those considering ditching your Netflix account or the weekly trip to Blockbuster and downloading movies instead. One of the following methods for watching movies might be right up your street:

If you are on a PC you can try any of the services below, which include:

Vizumi Movie Downloads
CinemaNow
Movielink
Guba
Amazon Unbox
iTunes

If you are a Mac user, the choice is easy. Only iTunes will work on your platform.

Note, however, that you’ll be forced to use Internet Explorer to download these movies unless you use iTunes or Amazon Unbox.

Digital Rights Management (DRM) is a big part of all of these products. Make sure you read the terms and conditions carefully before agreeing. At least for Amazon Unbox, the terms are somewhat draconian. DRM will keep many users away who’d like the ability to burn movies to DVD, transfer to other computers, etc. These users will simply purchase and rip DVDs directly (removing DRM), or use bittorent to acquire movies.

Vizumi are backed by media giants Arts Alliance Media and studios are constantly being signed up as partners from Warner Brothers and 20th Century Fox to Paramount and Sony. They offer 100% safe, legal and official movies. Vizumi software is easy to use and becoming a member (for free) allows you to download films to own or to rent, on a pay per view basis. They also offer free downloads every day.

Since branching out from their Usenet product through a deal to sell Waner Bros. movies in June and Sony movies in July, GUBA has mainly been competing on price and referral fees for recommending more users to the site. GUBA also features user-generated and usenet videos for free alongside premium movies users can buy or rent. Usenet movies can be downloaded in iPod and PSP formats as well.

CinemaNow’s most recent claim to fame has been their release of “Too Fast Too Furious” online at the same time as the DVD release, an industry first. They also have a Burn-to-DVD feature that allows you to burn a DVD playable on almost any DVD player for select titles. CinemaNow provides movies from Disney, Fox, Lionsgate, NBC Universal, Sony, and Warner Bros. Like most of the others, CinemaNow requires users to have a Windows PC and use Internet Explorer.

Formed out of a joint venture between major movie studios, Movielink has by far the largest catalog of new release and library titles. Their major partners include MGM, Paramount, Sony, Universal, Warner Brothers, Disney, Sundance Channel, BBC, and National Geographic. While not as consistently low priced as GUBA, if you look closely enough you can find various discounts for military personnel, college students, and mystery rentals.

After its initial launch, Ubox received wide criticism, most notably from BoinBoing about its user-unfriendly license agreements. Unbox has by far the best meta-data on movies and TV shows, incorporating plot summaries, release information, production stills, and consumer ratings. Unbox sells from 20th Century Fox, Fox Searchlight, Lionsgate, Paramount, Sony, Universal, and Warner Bros.

View video review of Amazon Unbox here:


As expected, iTunes launched their movie download service back in September. It features Disney movies and managed over one million dollars in sales during its first week. iTunes 7 has been criticized for the buggy 7.0 release corrected with 7.0.1, but nothing seems to be stopping the iTunes juggernaut.

View iTunes Movies review here:



Recommendations:
For all you Apple Mac users the choice is easy with iTunes. For PC Windows users, Vizumi and Movielink have the deepest catalogues with Guba having the most competitive pricing.

CinemaNow has an outrageously priced burn-to-DVD product that may be attractive to some users (although simply buying the DVD seems to make a lot more sense).

The options in the UK are somewhat more limited for Movie Downloads with Vizumi the best choice. Alternatively, try Love Film where you can buy a new release for £20, download it and they also send you the DVD.

What they all do seem to have in common is they are all (except Guba) quite expensive for such low quality content. The more people who use these services however, the more chance these prices will be slashed in coming months.

Vizumi has a few HD Downloads and this is where the future is as Blu-Ray has seemingly won the battle over HD, can it win the battle against digital downloads?