Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Here's How To Watch a Movie Online - Was I a Jerk?

By Sam Timlin

I recently received an email from a friend asking if she could borrow a DVD of "Godzilla". I wrote back telling her to quit bugging me and just download it.

Ok, maybe I wasn't quite so harsh. But I think I threw him off at first!

My point was that he didn't need to go and find the DVD. All you need anytime you want to watch a movie is an internet connection.

More and more people have been asking us what the best way to download movies online is, and whether it is possible to find a big selection online.

First, let me assure you that, yes, there is an enormous selection of movies available online. Not only can my friend find Godzilla, but she can choose from all the latest releases as well as old favorites. In fact, you have more to choose from online than any video store can offer.

Now that that's out of the way, let's talk about the question so many of you have ? "Where can I download movies online?"

First, I think it's important to mention where NOT to go to download movies. There are a number of "shareware" programs such as Kazaa or Limewire that people use to find music, movies or other files online. These don't work too badly for music, but for movies they are horrendous.

When you download movies from these networks, you have a good chance of catching a virus! These networks are unmonitored, so you have no idea what exactly you are downloading.

Two other problem with these types of sites - selection and download speeds.

Movies are of course very large files. These peer to peer programs can take as long as a few days to download a movie; the speeds can be incredibly slow. You will also have the problem of sparse selection compared to your other options.

You can also choose to use a paid download service. You can find many websites which allow you to download movies on a per-download pricing model. You find the movie you want to download, pay a fee (generally about $10) and can download the movie at high speed over a secure connection.

While this is not necessarily bad choice, there are cheaper ways to download movies.

You can also choose to go with membership based movie download websites. These sites charge a onetime fee for unlimited access to the movies on the website. This fee is usually somewhere between 30 and 50 dollars ? you can download all the movies you like at any time after paying this membership fee.

The great thing about these sites is that you only have to pay once for access to a huge selection of movies. The download speeds are good and they are guaranteed to be free of viruses.

The good membership sites will also provide software that lets you burn the movies onto DVD so you can watch them on your TV instead of just your computer.

Did my friend find Goodfellas?

Yes he did. And I'm pretty confident he won't be bugging me for a DVD in the future ;)

With an increasing number of people looking to the web for movie downloads, you'll see the number of brick and mortar video stores declining. Downloading movies, after all, is easy ? you can find all your favorites without even leaving the house!

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