Movie Download Memberships: Worth the Money?
Marc Sandford
Our choices over how we get our movies have increased tremendously with the expansion of services provided by the Internet. We can choose our favorite movie online and then have it delivered by mail. However, we can simply skip the mail delivery and watch the movie immediately online.
We can do this in one of two ways. We can try for the free route online or we can pay for our movies via a movie download membership site. This article will compare offline video stores and the 'free' online alternatives against the online download memberships.
Movie download memberships have the advantage of big archives full of movie titles to choose from. How much or how often you download movies from these large archives is strictly up to you. No offline video store will ever be able to match this because they have a limited amount of physical space.
This means that they are forced to cater to popular tastes. Online memberships can have an extremely varied and extensive movie selection because they aren't limited by shelving space. If you have your own unique tastes but also enjoy the popular movies, you can get both online.
It is often an easier task to search online than browsing through endless shelves for a particular movie in a brick and mortar store. A search box that will search by director, title, actor, or any keyword will make your search for a movie online very easy. There are also lists that split movies into various genres and categories.
These lists also include movies categorized by latest additions, critic choices, popularity, and alphabetically. Members themselves are sometimes allowed to rate and write reviews for the movies. Nothing beats a user's review when it comes to judging the pure entertainment value of a movie.
A large selection of movies in their archives is typical of online memberships. Any movies that are legal and free are almost always public domain which means that they are no longer copyrighted. These are the golden oldie film classics.
Recent episodes of popular TV series are available for viewing on the web sites of the major television networks. These will only be up for viewing for a brief time and will be limited to just a few series.
Download membership sites offer safety from viruses, worms, spy ware and mal ware. However, you're playing a game of Russian roulette when downloading movies from 'free' sites. You never know what sort of virus or spy ware might have been introduced into your file by someone else if you're using a file sharing network for your downloads.
In summary, a list of some of the advantages that paid online movie sites enjoy over the 'free' online and offline alternatives were presented. The economy, speed, and convenience of getting entertainment directly off the Internet is nothing short of amazing. However, any of the inconveniences of the local video store are greatly overshadowed by the potential risks that 'free' downloads pose to your computer.
About the Author:
See my review of two of the best known legal movie download sites that do not rely on p2p networks. One collaborates with the big Hollywood heavy hitters in order to build a great movie selection. The other does not. If you're looking for legal movies to download, see this review.
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