In the beginning, there was video rental. You can pay a visit to your favorite location, either a standalone establishment or perhaps a corner of your super market, pay several dollars, and return home to enjoy a film on your VHS or Betamax (remember those?) VCR.

Then came DVDs. Movie renting became more popular, standalone rental stores could possibly be found every few miles, and since they could not give a large enough selection, the local supermarkets pretty much 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 film, 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 lot more limited selection than you would have if you got in your car and drove to your local video store.

The problem of limited selection was quickly solved, in contrast, with the advent of mail-order movie rental. A subscription to a mail-order movie rental service would permit you to choose from literally tens of thousands of movie titles, set them up in your rental queue, as well as have them mailed directly to your door. Simply, though, the trade-off was time. As soon as you could look here mailed back the movie you had finished watching, it took a few days for another one to arrive.

At long last, it looks as though we might have arrived at the ultimate movies-at-home solution: movie downloading. Whenever you download your movies online, your selection is virtually unlimited, your wait time is minimal, and also your costs are affordable.

Based on the on-line service you choose, there are several methods used to obtain 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 begin to watch your movie almost instantly, and the price can be very reasonable... in fact, a few subscription services include unlimited streaming video in your membership package. The one drawback to streaming video is the fact that you cannot 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 movie 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're going to expire after a particular period. This could vary by service and be from 24 hours to 30-days.

Lastly, it really is possible to download complete movies, burn them to DVD, and watch them on your TV, home entertainment center, computer, or elsewhere, just like any movie that you have purchased in a shop. Costs due to this can differ widely, and you can find movies priced from what you will 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 most likely locate a movie download plan that can fit your preferences and accommodate your lifestyle.