To start with, there was video rental. You can pay a visit this web page link to your favorite location, either a standalone establishment or perhaps a corner of your grocery store, 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 might be found every few miles, and since they couldn't offer a large enough selection, the local supermarkets just about got out of the film rental business.

The home movie-watching market took a leap forward in the event the cable industry began to offer "Video on Demand." Now you might choose a film, view it at your leisure, have it charged to your monthly cable bill, and never need to leave your home. In exchange for this convenience, you were offered a much 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, on the other hand, with the creation of mail-order movie rental. A subscription to a mail-order movie rental service would make it possible for 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. Essentially, though, the trade-off was time. Once you mailed back the film you had finished watching, it took several 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, and also your costs are affordable.

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

Another method used to download movies online is a rental concept. Basically, you can download the film to a storage device (computer hard drive, TiVo, even an iPod or computer 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 particular period. This may vary by service and be anywhere from around 24 hours to 30 days.

Eventually, it's 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 have purchased in a shop. Costs for this may vary widely, and you'll find movies priced from what you would pay in a retail store, to "clearance bin" pricing, to membership and subscription plans.

In conclusion, downloading your movies online can be the ultimate in twenty-first century convenience. If you're ready to shop around a bit, you will more than likely find a movie download plan that can fit your requirements and accommodate your lifestyle.