网上电影租赁升温但阻碍仍存

　　从网上租借电影光盘的主意现在看起来比两年前要现实得多，当时一个名为“Movielink”的电影光盘租借网站刚刚创建。现在，随着互联网传输速度越来越快，用户已经习惯于在网上租借电影光盘在家庭影院系统中播放，“Movielink”也不再是一枝独秀，其有了一个竞争对手“CinemaNow”。 　　更重要的是，诸如苹果公司的iTunes和Roxio公司的Napster等网络音乐服务的发展已经显示，用户愿意在网上购买价格优惠的电影。但是，电影租赁网站本身并没有像iTunes发展得那样快，尽管他们现在提供的下载速度要比以前快得多。分析人士称，原因是网上租赁业务销售的光盘内容和种类有限，而且与离线零售店相比价格上仍然略高，这使得他们在竞争当中对用户的吸引力不足。另外，虽然现在用户可以在没有下载完整部电影之前就开始观看，但下载的时间仍然较长，如果连接速度不快有时需要等待一个小时。

　　CinemaNow的下载速度不错，但用户需要拥有足够的带宽才能确保电影的画面质量不打折扣。另外，两家租赁网站的服务计费均是从用户开始浏览就计算上了，而不是从下载完成之后才开始计算，这意味着表面的服务费比实际上的服务费要低很多。

　　最后，用户还不能将下载下来的电影复制到CD或是DVD光盘上在机器上播放或是将它们转移到另外一台计算机上，除非你拥有一个与电视机匹配的连接器，可以在电视上观看，否则你无法将下载内容转移到其他硬盘上。

　　The idea of renting movies online seems a lot less silly than it did two years ago, when a site called Movielink debuted.

　　Internet connections have gotten a little faster, we've had time to get used to the idea of the computer as home theater and Movielink has been joined by a competitor, CinemaNow

　　Most important, music services like Apple's iTunes and Roxio's Napster have shown that people will buy fairly priced downloads, even when the same stuff is available for free on file-sharing systems.

　　But the movie-rental sites themselves haven't improved nearly as much, to judge from a week of trying out each. CinemaNow and Movielink now offer better downloading options that reduce or eliminate the lengthy wait to transfer a movie to a computer.

　　But they still carry too few titles at too high a price. There's very little here to lure anybody from ordinary movie-rental stores, DVD-by-mail services like Netflix, or cable and satellite pay-per-view options.

　　Both CinemaNow and Movielink look and work alike in some respects. You must run Windows to watch anything at either site. Both require loading their own download-management software as well, but Movielink is more annoying to use -- the site can't even be viewed in any browser but Internet Explorer and was agonizingly slow.

　　Forget using either site without a broadband Internet account -- these movies weigh in at 500 or more megabytes apiece. Although you can start watching movies before they've finished downloading, that still involves a wait of at least a few minutes and as much as an hour, depending on your connection. CinemaNow's streaming-media options permit almost immediate viewing, but to avoid sacrificing quality you'll need enough bandwidth to accommodate its full 700-kbps feed.

　　These sites' rental rates start at $2.99 for up to 48 hours of viewing -- the clock starts ticking when you first begin watching, not when the download completes -- but all the flicks I rented cost $3.99 or $4.99 and allowed 24 hours of use.

　　CinemaNow offers a few other pricing choices. You can sign up for $9.95 or $29.95 "Premium Pass" monthly subscriptions that include unlimited rentals; the more expensive plan adds access to an "After Dark" collection of adult movies. The site also sells 30 rather obscure titles as so-called permanent downloads -- "Manilow Live!" can be yours for $14.99 if you have a hankering for the syrupy singer's work.

　　You can't copy any of these downloads to a CD or DVD for viewing on a DVD player or move them to another computer. If you own a laptop with a TV-compatible connector, such as a composite-video or S-Video jack, you can plug it into your set for viewing on a bigger screen, but otherwise each rental stays welded to your hard drive.

　　Movielink offers its titles in RealVideo and Windows Media formats; CinemaNow only provides Windows Media downloads. Picture quality varies but never comes close to DVD; for instance, Movielink's wide-screen-formatted titles have a resolution of 512 by 288 pixels per frame, or less than half that of a wide-screen-enhanced DVD.

　　To my eyes, these services' downloads come closest to regular cable TV, aside from occasional outbreaks of pixilation or blurring in busy or cluttered scenes.

　　Both CinemaNow and Movielink suffer from a pathetically thin selection -- 854 and 747 titles as of Friday afternoon. Since many movies are made available to these sites only for limited periods before moving to cable and satellite TV those numbers fluctuate over time.

　　Unless you're looking for a movie from the past few years, the odds weigh heavily against you finding it on either site. Half of the titles I considered renting -- for instance, "Heathers," "Glengarry Glen Ross" and "Office Space" -- weren't available.

　　The older the flick, the worse your chances: Of the top 10 titles on the American Film Institute's "greatest American movies" list, Movielink provides only one and CinemaNow offers none.

　　Movielink's chief executive, Jim Ramo, explained that until the late '90s, studios didn't buy Internet distribution rights, which means the site must negotiate with individual copyright holders for each movie. Ramo noted that he can't provide "Ferris Bueller's Day Off," because the rights to the song "Twist and Shout," which plays in one scene, would cost too much to obtain.

　　Who would want to put up with services as dysfunctional as this? It's hard to imagine.

　　College students who have broadband Internet but lack TVs in their dorm rooms might appreciate not having to return a DVD to the store. Then again, most college students don't have money either and will probably stick to the free file-sharing services.

　　And I suppose that After Dark library at CinemaNow could also draw customers who are tired of hearing snarky comments from video-store clerks.

　　Otherwise, though, the only people these sites seem to have been designed for are movie-studio executives.Until they learn from the example of the music industry -- offer their content at a discount online, but at a quality comparable to what you'd get in the store -- this online video-rental business isn't going anywhere.