Matt_bigscreen

I have been using Movielink for a few years now and have been very pleased with the service and support offered. Here is a detailed review and my opinions of the service:

Content Available:
When movielink first launched, it was lacking in available movies to download. Over time they have increased the studios available and now have a decent selection of titles. New releases are usually available for rental download about two to three weeks after the DVD release.

They have recently added a permanent download option for many of the movies, including new releases on the Tuesday of the same DVD release. Although I have not used the permanent download option yet, it is certainly something to consider in the future.

Rental Terms
Nearly all rentals are for a 30 day period, however once you start to watch the movie, you must finish it within the next 24 hours. I find this to occasionally be a drawback, but I have also learned to schedule my time so that I don't run into that issue anymore. Best tip I can give is to make sure you have time to watch the whole movie within 24hours before starting it. You can buy additional viewing periods but that defeats the money saving aspect of the service.

Pricing
Nearly all of the movies I rent now are either under a dollar or under three. They have two specials that are always running:

1)Mon-Thu a featured movie will be offered for less than a dollar. Recent offerings have been The Great Raid, 40 Year Old Virgin, Jarhead, Constant Gardener and many more. Occasionally the movie is an obscure one, but those seem to be fewer and fewer.

2) Each week they have a list of half off movies for a certain theme or genre. Things like War Epics, Movies Mothers will Love (mothers day), Slapstick Comedy, etc.

Quality of download
The quality of movies downloaded has been very good. They are obviously compressed to save bandwidth and that may cause an issue if you are trying to watch it on a very large screen or in HD. They appear fine on both my traditional 19 inch CRT and my 15.4 inch notebook LCD. Movies are stored in a program called Movielink Manager and can be of Windows Media or RealPlayer formats. Both can play within the manager. You can start viewing a movie usually within 3-5 minutes depending on your connection speed. I typically have a movie fully downloaded in 20-40 minutes. Each movie takes up about 600mb to 1 gb of storage.

So overall, I am a fan of the service. It allows me to rent movies I want to see but not buy, saves me a trip to the video store or post office to get a mailed DVD and is not costly. I never pay over three dollars for a movie and often less than a dollar. I may have to wait a few weeks after release to get that price, but it is worth it. Normal prices are around $3-$5 when a discount is not applicable.

I recommend the service especially if you travel with a laptop as you can download the movies beforehand and take them with you without having to carry any clunky dvd's.

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davehutch

Hi Matt,

I'm glad you're enjoying movielink, but when I checked just now, it's not available for Macs so I can't even try it out.

lol,

Dave

Matt_bigscreen

Actually, thanks for pointing that out as I forgot to include that in the review. The site does not work with Firefox either. Internet Explorer is the only compatible browser currently...which is a downside. If it weren't for that, I would not even have IE installed on my systems.

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