In the beginning, there was video rental. You could pay a visit to your favorite location, either a standalone establishment or possibly a corner of your grocery store, pay a couple of dollars, and go back home to enjoy a film on your VHS or Betamax (remember those?) VCR.

Then came DVDs. Movie renting became more popular, standalone rental stores may be found every few miles, and since they couldn't give a large enough selection, the local supermarkets basically got out of the free movie rental business.

The home movie-watching market took a leap forward when the cable industry began to offer "Video on Demand." Now you could choose a movie, view it at your leisure, have it charged to your monthly cable bill, and never need to leave your house. In exchange for this convenience, you were offered a significantly more limited selection than you might have if you got within your car and drove to the local video store.

The problem of limited selection was quickly solved, however, with the creation of mail-order movie rental. A subscription to a mail-order movie rental service would enable you to decide on literally tens of thousands of movie titles, set them up within your rental queue, as well as have them mailed directly to your door. Basically, however, the trade-off was time. As soon as you mailed back the movie you had finished watching, it took a few days for another one to arrive.

At long last, it looks as although we might have arrived at the greatest movies-at-home solution: movie downloading. When you download your movies online, your selection is virtually unlimited, your wait time is minimal, as well as your costs are affordable.

Determined by the online service you choose, you will find several methods used to get movies online. The very first is streaming video. You can stream video either to your computer or to a device attached to your television. You can begin to watch your movie almost instantly, and the price is very reasonable... actually, a few subscription services include unlimited streaming video within your membership package. The one drawback to streaming video is that you can't save the movie to a DVD or other storage medium and take it with you for watching elsewhere or in the future; you are limited to viewing it on the device to which it's streaming.

Another method used to download movies online is a rental concept. Basically, you may download the movie to a storage device (computer hard drive, TiVo, even an iPod or game console), and watch it at your convenience. Since you are only "renting" these movies and not purchasing them, they are going to expire after a specified period. This will likely vary by service and be from twenty four hours to 30-days.

Inevitably, it is possible to download complete movies, burn them to DVD, and watch them on your TV, home entertainment center, computer, or anywhere else, just like any movie that you've got purchased in a store. Costs for this will vary widely, and you may find movies priced from what you should pay in a retail store, to "clearance bin" pricing, to membership and subscription plans.

In conclusion, downloading your movies online may be the ultimate in twenty-first century convenience. For anybody who is prepared to shop around a bit, you will almost certainly locate a movie download plan that will fit your requirements and accommodate your lifestyle.

ISSN: 1692-7257