I think this is one of the few times I will disagree with TMO's staff. I've actually tried one of those other online movie rental services called MovieLink, and I actually liked using their service. Will probably rent more movies from them in the future. Yes the video was compressed and yes I did watch it on my PC desktop, but it didn't bother me as much as some might think. Don't underestimate how many people will place convenience before quality. Good example: McDonalds. Have you seen "Super-size Me"? I will probably not visit another fast food joint for the next year. I'm serious.

Just like all paid content, it takes time to develop viable business models and satisfy technology restraints. Of course, Starz will find a limited audience today but only growth will result as broadband adoption continues to rise and technology continues to improve. Eventually all TVs, stereos, handheld devices, etc will be IP enabled. So your argument that people only watch movies on TV becomes moot. Open up your mind and use vision not hate for Real.

Let's see – people spend thousands of dollars on HDTVs, home theater systems, Bose speakers, etc., and we're now supposed to spend $13 to download a movie just so we don't have to go down to Blockbuster and spend $4? Or to Wal-Mart and BUY it for $18? And you could be back home probably an hour before you finished downloading it. If you want to back up the DVD you just downloaded, you've just spend the money to buy the new, higher-quality (in both video and sound) version. Thanks, I'll pass.

When you consider that laptops are selling as well as desktops, "mobile use an a laptop" is far less the exception than it used to be. Also, people want to rent movies, if Blockbuster and the plethora of "video rental" stores in my neighborhood are any indication. Considering that movies are probably at least 100 times larger than your average MP3, the idea that I would want to have a bunch of movies on my hard drive in the same way that I have a bunch of songs is not likely.

I think it's a start of a decent service. Why? Well, first of all, I have no desire to buy movies. I rarely watch the same one more than once. So this service would be great for me.

But I can still see why this service is likely not to last. Maybe if they used QuickTime...

"download and watch 100 or more movies each month, using Real's media player software."

Don't they mean, "using Real's adware?" It's mess right off the block. Eventually most home entertainment may be IP enabled, making some similar service viable. But I'd look to this to put a huge dent in Real's bottom line for at least the next 24 months, if they can even sustain the losses that long. For certain, Glaser is dumb enough to have overestimated the market for this service, underestimated the time to profitability, and overestimated the consumer's tolerance for his software.

He so badly wants to BE Steve Jobs that he can't help himself.

To be fair to Real, their RealPlayer has improved and in their last release they've cleaned up their act a bit. But these changes may have come at a time when it is too little too late. Most people I know refuses to touch RealPlayer. And last I checked that link on their website to the free player is still really hard to find, which doesn't help. But it is interesting to note that they do develop Helix, an open source Linux player that can play real media files among other things. I've tried it out. It's quite lean.

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Anonymous wrote:
we're now supposed to spend $13 to download a movie just so we don't have to go down to Blockbuster and spend $4?

Bear in mind, that $13 is a monthly subscription with a 100 view/month maximum. If you watch just one movie a week, it's already cheaper than most video rental stores. You could theoretically download a movie a day and bring the cost per showing to 43 cents a showing. Given the cost of ordering premium movie channels on Cable, or ordering Pay-per-view or onDemand style movies from the cable company, that's not such a bad deal.

I prefer owning films and seeing them on my home system though, so I probably won't sign up for this personally. I do think there is a market for it though.

Now, if this sort of service allowed me to order from a catalog of TV episodes on DVD as well, I'd cancel my cable service and go this way. I don't have to worry about missing an episode or seeing them out of order, I'd get 6 months of service for the price of a single-season box set, I could watch at my leisure, and wouldn't have to waste reams of video tape or lots of storage space on my DVR box for favorite episodes: I could just watch them again whenever I wanted.

That's kind of where I think home entertainment will go: imagine a limitless TiVo that's already recorded everything that was on every channel for the last year.

Movies and TV shows I definitely have a very limited interest in owning. So a rental/subscription/ppv model of some sort is not out of the question. But the chances that Real will make something worth my time and frustration, which I consider inevitable coming from them? Highly unlikely.

The only thing that suggests to me that this service might have a future is the Starz company. I currently subscribe to their(Starz) "blocks" of movie types through my cable company and I think they are very good at picking movies to offer. Their cable tv service is worth the money.

As to why I would change from thier cable service to watching poor quality movies that take forever to download and watching them through the annoying Real player on my desktop computer...?? You got me on that one.

very good