At first, there was video rental. You could pay a visit to your favorite location, either a standalone establishment or a corner of your super market, pay a number of dollars, and go back home to enjoy a movie on your VHS or Betamax (remember those?) VCR.

Then came DVDs. Movie renting became more popular, standalone rental stores may very well be found every few miles, and since they could not provide a large enough selection, the local supermarkets virtually got out of the movie rental business.

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

The problem of limited selection was quickly solved, alternatively, with the advent of mail-order movie rental. A subscription to a mail-order movie rental service would permit you to decide on literally tens of thousands of movie titles, set them up within your rental queue, and also have them mailed directly to your door. Now, though, the trade-off was time. When you mailed back the film you had finished watching, it took a few days for another one to arrive.

At long last, it looks as even though we might have arrived at the best 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.

Based on the internet service you choose, you will find several methods used to get movies online. The first is streaming video. You can stream video either to your computer or to a device attached to your television. You may begin to watch your movie almost instantly, and the price is extremely reasonable... in reality, a few subscription services include unlimited streaming video in your membership package. The one drawback to streaming video is that you can not save the movie to a DVD or any other storage medium and take it with you for watching elsewhere or even in the future; you are restricted to viewing it on the device to which it really is streaming.

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

Eventually, it is possible to download complete movies, burn them to DVD, and watch them on your TV, home entertainment center, computer, or elsewhere, as with every movie that you have purchased in a store. Costs due to this can differ widely, and you'll 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 best in twenty-first century convenience. When you are willing to shop around a bit, you will almost certainly locate a movie download plan that may fit your needs and accommodate your lifestyle.