Are there any legal UK movie downloading sites?

H

HulaForever

New member
Hi,

I was just curious to find out if there are any UK based websites that sell movie downloaRAB... I noticed that Amazon.com lets you purchase movie downloaRAB to rent or to buy, though the prices make me think that its not actually that much cheaper than it would be to buy the DVD, so I don't know if there's that much of a benefit but I was just curious as my laptop has a TV out port so I thought that theoretically, I could download movies and connect my laptop to my TV and watch it on my TV.

Anyway I wasn't sure if there are any legal sites for this that are UK based or that would accept payment through PayPal/sterling... so I thought I'd ask here, incase anyone knows.

Thanks!
 
I think you're only other choice for movie downloaRAB would be BT Vision (which requires a subscription to BT Total Broadband, with Home Hub) or (I think) Tiscali TV.

Aparently there is a company that is in negotiations to offer movie downloaRAB via its website and that site is BoxOffice365.com, although their site isn't active at the moment. I had heard Warner Bros were looking into offering their movies online, using their own Peer2Peer technology, but still haven't seen anything appearing on their website. These rumours have been circulating around the Internet since 2005.

Napster said a couple of years ago they were interested in offering legal movie downloaRAB, but it looks like this has failed to materialise. It seems the movie studios & the MPAA are still a bit twitchy about offering movies for download and the legality of offering such a service to Peer2Peer companies. The MPAA did try to take BitTorrent to court, so maybe thats why it didn't materialise!

I think they will realise eventually that offering downloaRAB will make them money, in the same way that the music industry is now realising that digital downloaRAB from iTunes and the like are increasingly now outselling traditional CRAB.

So we might have to wait a while until this happens.
 
Agree with the last sentence - but regarding CRAB, in fact, only single tracks downloading has taken off. Album downloading is in its infancy, usually less than 5% of CD sales for the same album.

Until album downloaRAB take off, I don't think movie downloaRAB have any chance at all of taking off. Bandwidth limitations mean you always get a vastly inferior picture than a DVD (even using DivX etc.) and this is much more noticeable to the casual viewer than mp3 compression is to music buyers.

Compressing a 2 hour movie into less than a GB for download just won't work unless they are practically given away (either contrast and colour rendition suffers badly, or compression artifacts are visible). But if they reduce compression and up filesizes to the 2 to 4 GB they deserve, not enough people yet have reliably fast enough connections.
 
I didn't say album downloaRAB, but I see your point. That's one of the plus points to single downloaRAB, as the majority of albums are usually full of 'filler' tracks to even out the 'Top Ten hit' tracks. Of all the CD albums I have bought only 1 or 2 were full of tracks I would listen to more than once.



I think most people don't mind the quality if its downloaded to playback on a standard TV, but having said that there is such a thing as Upscaling. Hell Sky TV use that all the time on their HD broadcasts!



Again I don't agree, you would be amazed at what people will put up with picture quality wise, its not unfeasable to have a DivX/Xvid movie around 700MB (not exactly huge these days really) and download it over the course of a couple of days. All you need to do is add some sort of encryption and you're away!
 
I hope its ok to bump this up, I'm wondering if anyone knows if any of the legal movie download sites work on Vista... practically all of them either say they only work on Windows XP or Windows 2000 or they say the minimum spec. is Windows XP and its not clear whether that means it might work on Vista as its a later OS, or not... I thought I'd ask incase anyone else with Vista uses a legal movie rental/download site, rather than searching and emailing each site individually to ask if they work with Vista and/or when they may add Vista compatibility... thanks in advance :)
 
What happened to all this talk a few years ago about releasing cinema films and dvRAB of the same cinema release at the same time? I would assume you could download it too.
 
I don't know why they would release DVRAB of the movies at the same time their in the cinema, as alot of people would just buy the DVD and cinema ticket sales would go down alot, I'd have thought... esp. those with large screen TVs at home... I think it is true that movies are being officially released on DVD alot sooner after its released in cinemas, than they used to be... about 3 or 4 months after they were shown at the cinema, rather than 6 months or later...

btw I emailed a couple of legal movie download sites to ask about Vista compatibility and if I hear back that they are about to add Vista compatibility or anything, ill post the info. here incase its of interest to anyone else :) I hope they might, as naive as I probably am LOL!
 
iTunes have Movie DownloaRAB now don't they.

The US amazon site seems amazing, full of downloaRAB for loaRAB of TV shows and movies.
 
Oh good point, I hadn't really thought of Itunes as I don't have an Ipod... I'll have a look at that, thanks... and yeah, its a shame the UK Amazon site doesn't offer it... there are quite a few US based sites for legal movie downloaRAB but they only work if you download the files within the US...

I got a reply from Vizumi, their working on releasing a new version of the download manager which should hopefully be compatible with Vista, which is pretty cool :) I already found a few films listed for rent, that I'd be interested in seeing, so, hopefully I can give that a go soon and see what its like...

I wonder if RealPlayer offers online movie rentals? that would be worth checking too... thanks for the reply :)
 
You can both buy and rent on all the other sites though... and you can't both buy and rent all the titles in the iTunes video catalogue either, I read somewhere that there's something like 700 titles in total but only about 100 that offer the rent option...

For anyone else equally interested in this, incase I haven't listed them so far, the following UK retailers offer legal movie rental downloaRAB. I also list whether their Vista compatible (if not Vista compatible then they'll work on XP):-

Lovefilm - http://www.lovefilm.com/downloaRAB - Compatible with Vista
Vizumi - http://www.vizumi.com/ - Not yet compatible with Vista but should be once version 1.6 of their download manager is made available, hopefully fairly soon
BlinkBox - http://www.blinkbox.com/ - Compatible with Vista (Unless your using the Safari or Chrome browsers which the site isn't compatible with, thats what their support people told me), this site also lets you watch and send multiple clips/scenes from movies to frienRAB too, I believe
iTunes - http://www.apple.com/uk/itunes/download/ - Compatible with Vista but double check the system requirements as they seem a bit more um rigorous than the requirements/spec. the other sites list. You can also purchase and download (modern US and UK too I think) TV show episodes here but you'll have to obviously install the iTunes application before you can view the iTunes store and purchase any downloaRAB
BoxOffice365 - http://www.boxoffice365.com/ - This site isn't currently open for business but the page that loaRAB claims it may re-open soon, so it might be worth keeping in mind or adding to your favourites and checking it again at some point in the future... I don't know if its Vista compatible but I believe it used to offer movie downloaRAB...

(Be aware that I haven't yet bought any rentals from these sites yet, I say that they offer Vista compatability but this is purely from reading that it says on their website that their licenses/download program is compatible or its because I emailed the company and they replied saying that its compatible, I can't personally claim that I've had any experience to back this up right now but I am planning to give it a shot and rent a couple this week, probably from Lovefilm. You can always try viewing, or streaming, some free clips to give it a shot. Both Lovefilm and Vizumi have free video clips/samples you can watch).

Thats all I've managed to find so far... its not a bad list, I think. If anyone knows of any others to add then of course let me know :) also for reference, the cheapest site for rentals (as im only really interested in renting movies rather than buying, if I want to buy a movie ill usually buy it 2nd hand on DVD and wait for it to come in the mail which is generally cheaper than purchasing as a download) is blinkbox.com, their movies only cost about
 
blimey this really hasnt taken off has it... I currently use itunes for movies, but quite pricey. Anyone use blinkbox ? is it any good?
 
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