From the beginning, there was video rental. You could pay a visit to your favorite location, either a standalone establishment or perhaps a corner of your super market, pay several 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 could possibly be found every few miles, and since they couldn't provide a large enough selection, the local supermarkets essentially 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 could choose a movie, 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 might have if you got within your car and drove to your local video store.

The problem of limited selection was quickly solved, on the other hand, with the advent of mail-order movie rental. A subscription to a mail-order movie rental service would permit you to pick 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. Now, though, the trade-off was time. When you mailed back the film you had finished watching, it took a number of days for another one to arrive.

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

Depending on the internet service you choose, you can find several methods used to obtain movies online. The very first is streaming video. You can stream video either to your computer or to a device attached to your television. You may start to watch your movie almost instantly, as well as the price is quite reasonable... in fact, a couple of subscription services include unlimited streaming video within your membership package. The one drawback to streaming video is that you can't save the movie to a DVD or other storage medium and take it with you for watching elsewhere or even in the future; you are limited by 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 movie to a storage device (computer hard drive, TiVo, even an iPod or computer game console), and watch movies online it at your convenience. Since you are only "renting" these movies and not purchasing them, they are going to expire after a specified period. This will likely vary by service and be anywhere from 24 hours to 30 days.

Inevitably, 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've got purchased in a shop. Costs because of this may vary widely, and you may 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 greatest in twenty-first century convenience. For anybody who is willing to shop around a bit, you will certainly find a movie download plan that can fit your preferences and accommodate your lifestyle.