Launched on June 14, Starz! Ticket on Real Movies is a subscription-based service. For a flat fee, you can watch as many movies as you want every month. It also means you have fewer films from which to choose.

For $12.95 a month, users have access to more than 100 films, such as Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, Chicago, Lost in Translation, and Finding Nemo. About 25 percent of the site’s movie lineup rotates on a weekly basis. Major studios involved at launch included Disney, Miramax, Revolution Studios, Universal, MGM, Sony, 20th Century Fox, and New Line.

Films are offered via RealVideo 10’s RealPlayer, and they can be downloaded in as little as 20 minutes, depending on the speed of your broadband connection. This makes the service ideal for frequent travelers. In fact, you can select a few movies to download overnight to bring on a business trip the next day. Because of the subscription model, you are able to watch the movie for as long as it is in the service, instead of the single 24-hour contracts with pay-per-download services.

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You’ll pay for this in patience, however: New movies are available about 2 to 3 months after the same films debut on other VOD services, which is 45 days after they appear on DVD.

The player itself is somewhat confusing. Everything, from the download to the viewing, happens through the Real browser. We selected Hollywood Homicide from the Hot Picks list and began downloading. It took about 28 minutes. Unlike with CinemaNow or Movielink, you can’t watch the movie while it downloads.

The process of actually starting the downloaded film wasn’t intuitive, but once we learned that our movie was stored in our Real library, starting it and playing it was a simple task. But the interface definitely could have been clearer.

The picture was good, but it got somewhat blocky in full-screen format, and scenes that were too dark or action-packed had noticeable trails and artifacts. And, as with CinemaNow, it wasn’t clear whether we were getting widescreen or full-screen versions of the films we selected.

Because of its subscription-only model, Starz! Ticket on Real Movies is a good choice for those with big hard drives who want to stock up on films for a short trip. But, for home viewing, the limited selection makes standard DVDs a much better alternative.

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