At 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 a couple of dollars, and return home to enjoy a movie online 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 couldn't offer 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 could choose a film, view it at your leisure, have it charged to your monthly cable bill, and never need to leave your house. In exchange due to this convenience, you were offered a lot more limited selection than you would have if you got within your car and drove to the local video store.

The problem of limited selection was quickly solved, conversely, with the creation of mail-order movie rental. A subscription to a mail-order movie rental service would allow 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. In essence, though, the trade-off was time. As soon as you mailed back the film you had finished watching, it took a few days for the next one to arrive.

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

Determined by the internet service you choose, there are several methods used to get movies online. The very first is streaming video. You may stream video either to your computer or to a device attached to your television. You can start to watch your movie almost instantly, and the price is extremely 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 can't save the movie 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's 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 movies and not purchasing them, they will expire after a particular period. This could vary by service and be between 24 hours to 30-days.

Finally, it's 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've got purchased in a shop. Costs due to this may differ widely, as well as you can find movies priced anywhere from around 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 ultimate in twenty-first century convenience. For anybody who is willing to shop around a bit, you will more than likely locate a movie download plan that may fit your requirements and accommodate your lifestyle.