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Hollywood for Download
Are video-on-demand sites ready for prime time, or ahead of their time?
by Marc Saltzman  Movielink began its VOD service in November of 2002 as a joint venture between the film studio divisions of Warner Bros., Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Paramount, Universal, and Sony Pictures Entertainment. Since its inception, the service has offered films in both Windows Media and Real format. Visitors can peruse the library of content by genre, or users can type in the name of an actor, director, or movie into the search window. Users can then download movies for $1.99 to $4.99, and can also stream them off the hard drive after about 2 minutes with the company’s Movies in Minutes feature. Similar to CinemaNow, Movielink offers well-known titles like The Last Samurai, The Matrix Revolutions, and Mystic River about 45 days after they’re released on DVD. Once the movie starts, consumers have 24 hours to watch it before the player’s digital rights management (DRM) kicks in and prevents further viewing. That is, unless you cough up a bit more dough to extend the rental period, at a rate beginning at $.99 per additional viewing. 
The site has about 800 titles, including many independent and foreign films. Movielink is also the only service that offers content from six out of the seven major studios, with the exception of 20th Century Fox. The selection of movies at Movielink wasn’t as impressive as CinemaNow’s, but Movielink was easy to set up, and the service’s Movie Manager was much better than either CinemaNow’s or Starz! Ticket on Real Movies’, making it easy to queue up films and watch those you’ve already downloaded. For our speed test, we again chose Dirty Pretty Things. We downloaded the Real and Windows Media versions of the film, both of which were roughly the same size and were delivered at similar speeds to CinemaNow. For our video quality test, we purchased Kill Bill, Vol. 1. Though the video quality was good, it wasn’t quite as sharp as CinemaNow, with dark scenes being too dark and the light scenes appearing a little washed out. However, Movielink had the distinct advantage of offering both our test films in widescreen versions. These selections were roughly $1 more than CinemaNow’s offerings.
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