Download window: As with the rental downloads, you have 30 days
from the date of purchase to download a movie, but if the movie's
removed from the site due to licensing agreements before the 30 days is
up and before you download it, you might be making calls to customer
service in an effort to recover your funds. Good luck with that.
Large file size: What can I say; movie files are huge, sometimes exceed-
ing one gigabyte. It takes up to 90 minutes to download a movie, even on
a fast connection, and if your hard-drive capacity is 40 gigabytes or less,
you can fill it up in a hurry with movie files.
DVD-burning: Although you can burn a purchased movie to DVD, the
Windows Media Player format won't allow it to be played in a traditional
DVD player.
I strongly urge you to avoid using a public hotspot for movie downloads. For
one thing, some hotspot providers impose a data transfer limit, and if you
exceed that limit before your movie download is completed, you could
encounter some problems. Common courtesy, though, is the biggest reason
to avoid downloading any large file at a public hotspot. Big files clog the
bandwidth, and while you're downloading your movie, everyone else's con-
nection is slowed to a crawl.
Renting instead of downloading
Even though I've downloaded a rental movie or three, I much prefer to watch
DVDs. They don't take up space on my hard drive, and I don't have to spend
an hour and a half downloading them from the Web. The thing is, I can watch
most movies only once or twice. I've got my favorites that I can see over and
over again and never tire of them, but for the most part, if I've seen it once
I'm done with it.
In the old days, it used to be impossible to rent movies to take on the road
because, by the time I got home and returned the movie, I'd end up paying
more in late fees than the movie was worth. Enter: Netflix. Well, they entered
the room way before I ever knew they existed, so, I guess, it's more like,
Enter: Awareness of Netflix.
With Netflix, you pay a monthly subscription fee, choose a bunch of movies
you want to watch, and depending on your subscription plan, they start
sending them to you. When you're done with one, you send it back in the
postage prepaid envelope that they provide, and they send the next one in
line. It works out great if you get home every once in a while because you can
drop the movies in the mail as you watch them, and by the time you get
home, you've got new ones waiting for you.
Part VI: Entertaining Electronics
Page 318
