Failures

Failures

by Mike Masnick


Print



Stunned That Movie Download Sites Have Made It This Far

from the ouch dept

The NY Times has a fairly staggering (and often amusing) review of the "official" movie industry download sites, CinemaNow and MovieLink, where they wonder how the two companies could possibly remain in business. While they pick on MovieLink a bit, the real harsh words are reserved for CinemaNow, which charges a $10 monthly subscription plus a $4 or $5 per movie charge to download such great movies as "Addicted to Murder III: Bloodlust" and "Witchcraft XI: Sisters in Blood." Some great quotes: "How CinemaNow stays in business is a marvel. The site is so marred by typos and poor programming, it could have been a high school sophomore's first Web design project." At the end of the article, the reviewer makes the point that so many consumers have been trying to tell the movie industry for ages. If they're trying to offer such a service, why not embrace the technology and actually take advantage of what it lets you do - rather than trying to (weakly) imitate the offline experience with less features at a higher price? Overall, the reviewer points out, "Movielink and CinemaNow stand out primarily for their puny selection, poor video quality and overly rigid copy protection." Tell us what you really think, why don't you?

2 Comments | Leave a Comment..

 

Reader Comments (rss)

(Flattened / Threaded)

  1. More rubber monsters? by dorpus on May 15th, 2003 @ 2:47am

    If file sharing takes the money out of movie making, will we see more movies with rubber suits and purple smoke bombs?

    (reply to this comment) (link to this comment)

  2. Re: More rubber monsters? by Some guy on May 15th, 2003 @ 8:34am

    "CinemaNow was founded in 1999 and its investors include Lions Gate Entertainment, Microsoft and Blockbuster. The company is located in Marina del Rey, California."

    You see, Microsoft!

    (reply to this comment) (link to this comment)

Add Your Comment

Get Techdirt’s Daily Email
Plain Text HTML Save me a cookie
  • Plain Text: A CRLF will be replaced by break <br> tag, all other allowable HTML is intact
  • HTML: No formatting of any kind is done without explicitly being written in
  • Allowed HTML Tags: <b> <i> <p> <a> <em> <br> <strong> <blockquote> <hr> <tt>
Close
Get Techdirt’s Daily Email
Plain Text HTML Save me a cookie
Search the Techdirt Blog
And now, a word from our Sponsors..
Subscribe to Techdirt's Daily Email Newsletter

Techdirt's Daily Email Newsletter

Related Stories
Close
E-mail It