Initially, there was video rental. You can 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 read more popular, standalone rental stores may be found every few miles, and since they couldn't give a big 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 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 much 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, on the flip side, with the advent 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 in your rental queue, and have them mailed directly to your door. In essence, however, the trade-off was time. As soon as you mailed back the movie you had finished watching, it took a number of days for another one to arrive.

At long last, it looks as even 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, as well as your costs are affordable.

Determined by the on-line service you choose, you will discover 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 can begin to watch your movie almost instantly, and the price can be very reasonable... in reality, several 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 film to a DVD or 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 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 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 will likely vary by service and be anywhere from twenty four hours to 30 days.

Inevitably, it is 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 due to this may differ widely, and you may 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 may be the greatest in twenty-first century convenience. For anybody who is prepared to shop around a bit, you will most likely find a movie download plan that can fit your preferences and accommodate your lifestyle.