Online Movie Rentals

The battle over video media formats is an everlasting one. Recently HD-DVD succumbed to Blu-ray over the market of high definition media storage format, but why hasn't Blu-ray taken off? The answer can be found in the increasing number of digital media rental services.

I watch movies from a 40" LCD HDTV hooked up to a digital cable box, a computer, an XBox 360, and a Wii. The most obvious source is the digital cable box. With a multitude of channels, premium channels, and ON-Demand, there are plenty of movies to watch. But what about all these other devices?

Amazon Unbox

This is my favorite of all the online video rental methods. Rental prices range from $0.99 to $3.99, and movies can be bought as well. The negative to Amazon Unbox is that you are required to install their software to watch the movies, and their software is PC only. The plus though is that their software is very good, not very big, and it works. They have a great selection, and they offer the same rating system as they have on the rest of their site, so they can provide recommendations on what movies you may like. You can RemoteLoad, allowing you to be at work, and start downloading a movie onto your home computer for when you get home, though you don't have to wait for a movie to completely download to start watching it. And for rentals, the rental time does not start until you start watching. So you can download several movies onto your laptop for a trip, and wait to watch them whenever you want.

Netflix

If you already have a Netflix membership, you can watch an unlimited number of movies for free from online as well! Movies that are available instantly will have a "Play" button next to the standard "Add to Queue" one. The best part is you don't have to wait for the delay of mailing your movie and waiting for them to mail you a new one. However, there are still several flaws to their system, so I do not recommend this as highly as Amazon, even if you already have an account, making it cost nothing extra to use this method. First of all, their selection is inconsistent. A movie you started watching yesterday might not be still online today for you to finish it. I have run into this problem on numerous occasions already. The movie will even show up in your recently watched instant movies list, even after it's taken off their inventory of instant watch movies. Since Netflix streams their movies to you, unlike Amazon Unbox, you cannot download it on your laptop to bring on a trip. You must have "an active broadband connection to the Internet," as their requirements state. Another requirement is that Netflix is also PC only. So while this may be a cheaper way to watch movies online, it is a far less convenient one.

Blockbuster Total Access
Since I just mentioned Netflix, I thought it would only be fair to mention BLOCKBUSTER Total Access as well, even though I personally am not a member. So I looked around online for information on their online video rental service, and was surprised to find that I came up with nothing! I see they have a free one month trial though. So if someone knows differently and it does exist, let me know about their online video rental service and I'll give it a try to review it as well. Otherwise, they get a zero for not having one at all.

iTunes
The popular digital music site has also gotten into digital media. Unlike the previous services, I have not found a way to have the system recommend movies to you, but it is also the only one that is Mac-compatible. This requires downloading their software, but it's the same one as the one for music, so if you already use iTunes for music, you have the software and are already familiar with the store interface. Also, you can easily download movies to watch on your iPhone. Unfortunately, I find their player a bit flawed. "Full screen" doesn't quite mean full screen. Instead it means, "small movie with a lot of black background that you need to hit 'ctrl-3' to get real full screen, but we don't tell you that's what you need to do and you need to dig on the internet yourself".

XBox Live Video
The computer and the cable box are not the only devices capable of delivering digital media. The XBox Marketplace now offers XBox Live Video. Movies are bought through using Microsoft points, but of course that makes it more difficult to figure out how much you're paying for the movies. Unfortunately, it is difficult to browse their catalog, without being able to input easily through a controller. For now though, there isn't much of a selection so it didn't take too long for me to go through their list of movies and determine that there wasn't anything I was interested in watching that wasn't already available through a different method.

Sorry to burst your bubble, but the Wii does currently does not have any rental movie capability, ending my list of methods to rent movies through the internet.