sidg219 wrote:If there is one area of our lives which has been positively affected by the internet more than anything else, it is related to
movie downloads. Today not only are the latest Hollywood blockbusters available online, but also documentaries, sports, the best television shows, golden movies from yesteryears ... all ready to be downloaded and viewed.
What's more, with the easy availability of high-speed internet, DVD quality movies are no longer the province of DVD or Blue Ray discs, as the quality can be kept intact while compressing the files to a mere fraction of their DVD sizes allowing us to experience the same quality of video and audio on our computer screens, or if you so prefer burn it on to DVD disc and play it on your DVD player ! Most of these compressed file types belong to the family of DivX encoded movies, which can be of various 'codecs' or software specifications that compress movie files into extremely small sizes but retaining their quality. Several standalone DiVX players are now available on the market that allow you to play DiVX movies directly on your television screen or portable player, without requiring any re-conversion to the DVD format.
The other formats for movie downloads often require proprietary portable players ( like the iPod, PSP, Zune) that allow you to directly transfer the downloaded movie file onto the players for viewing. In addition there are quite a few video formats for watching on your PC only through software video players (e.g. Realplayer, FLV, Adobe Shockwave etc). A huge amount of third-party software is also available for converting files from one format to another which is often necessary if you want to watch your videos on your preferred device. Increasing new software media players are appearing on the market which play a wide range of formats without any proprietary restrictions (e.g. VLC media player).
Short clips have also become immensely popular as
movie downloads. Podcasts for iPods were the forerunners of this hugely popular format for viewing short video on the internet, millions now watch Youtube and other similar video sites on their PCs, as well as download them on their hard-drives for watching later. Music videos, news clips and short documentaries, comedy clips, TV clips, advertisements .. petabytes of them are readily available for easy download and watching.
Storing movie files is hugely popular compared to continuously streaming formats for one reason - viewers often like building up their movie collection for rewatching, or often, they watch parts of it at a time. Many of these downloads are protected by passwords, and some times, like SkyTV downloads, the downloads are time-bound and expire after a few days.
Coming to the issue of paying for your movie downloads, a number of online movies are only available on a pay-per-view basis which can be quite expensive. At
The Movie Downloads you pay a small upfront monthly fee on the other hand an download as much as you can, to your heart's content. By linking up with some of the best online databases, you have a choice of nearly 80 million full DVD quality movies, as well as limitless TV shows, music videos and other sports and documentary clips.
