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Starz to make their movies downloadable

news.com.com — Nice, Lets keep the ball rolling. Come on HBO.

Who dugg this? Made popular Jan 3, 2006

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48 Comments

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  • inkswamp, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4"1) We cannot put these movies on any portable medium (iPod).
    2) The code is being managed by Vongo - a subsidiary of Microshaft.
    3) Are only viewable with Windows Media Player, or eqivalent."

    Yep. Here we go again. Every company out there carps about how Apple dominates in music downloads, but they're the only company that hit just the right balance between exerting control over the content and allowing users to do what they want with it. And now, this inexplicable need to control and restrict what the consumer does with this stuff is going to open the door for Apple to sneak in and mop up yet again. That's fine. I think as big corporations go, Apple is reasonably benign, but the rest of these guys... absolute morons.
  • Tufriast, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I love Starz! to say the least.

    However, I am truly dissappointed that:
    1) We cannot put these movies on any portable medium (iPod).
    2) The code is being managed by Vongo - a subsidiary of Microshaft.
    3) Are only viewable with Windows Media Player, or eqivalent.

    Sorry, I'll digg it, but I'm waiting for the golden AllofMP3, to run AllofMovies or some such. The media giants need to realize that media is going to start getting real cheap fast, or else piracy is going to become the U.S. way of life.
  • pondster, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Lame, Lame, Lame and LAME!
    OK, snow day here with the wife, satellite's out - it looked like the day would be saved, I am SO wrong.

    Checked out the service, didn't even get to the quality. The ads state Pay per view movies close to the time they came out at the theater. (I'm thinking a service similar to hotel rooms that show them before they are on DVD) I didn't know 2 year old movies count as CLOSE!

    I'm sticking to netflix and going to try to get a refund for this crap (Oh and they don't show you a selection until you pay to sign up!)

    Do yourself a favor and look elsewhere, if you are into movies and like new releases then STAY AWAY!
  • JamesWilson, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1So if I am paying a Starz subscription fee already to my cable company to legally watch these movies whenever I want, why should I pay $9.95-a-month to watch them with DRM at lower quality?

    BitTorrent sounds like a much better, more natural option.
    If I pay for the content already.....why would I pay for this?
  • HMTKSteve, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I'm getting sick of this whole, "Yeah, we'll do that... but only if the consumer uses windows..." mantra coming out of the industry...

    -no digg until they allow mac/'nix users to join the club...
  • iSEPIC, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1"I'm not sure why people always assume Microsoft is always behind windows-only based programs."----because 99% of the folks on here are Apple-Fed-Sheep.
  • Murphys, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Now we need a crack for burning the flicks to DVD and I am there. I'd pay the $$ a month if I could use the movies MY way.
  • grantlairdjr, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Very disappointed they doesn't support closed captioning on all downloadable movies.
  • wilf_brim, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Um, people? You can put this on any portable video player OTHER than an iPod. Yes, the DRM is a pain. But so is the Apple DRM, something you fanbois continually ignore.

    I'm not really psyched about this (nothing really I want in Starz) but this is a step in the right direction.
  • saturnstar, on 05/20/2008, -0/+1I personally feel that for legitimate and free unlimited starz movie downloads - vongo is the best place to go. Try 14 days free trial of today's hottest online movie viewing and downloads service – Vongo

    Read vongo's review here: download unlimited starz movies
    http://movies.nitinblog.com/vongo-review
  • yaroze, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I have had starz for over a year on Real Player.
  • BenStockwell, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0It says I need a PC to use their service. Since when does PC mean Windows only? I also find it funny that it thinks I'm using a Mac.
  • JamesWilson, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0(I know what question you're asking, the answer is on demand)
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Hell yeah. I'll go along with whatever DRM scheme they offer up, as long as it doesn't PWN my computer behind my back. I've never been able to afford to subscribe to any channels like cinemax, starz, or hbo. However, I am able to download their shows via torrents, and I do enjoy a couple of them. If I could pay a reasonable fee to download them, I would go that route.
  • godmode, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0i was so excited until i saw "Real Networks" and "no portable devices"
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Who cares? I woudlnt pay for this.
  • headzoo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Been doing this for like, four months now. The problem is all the movies available are the same being shown on On Demand.
  • mikeazorin, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1This sucks. They really should have done it through MPEG-4, like Apple. I know you think they shouldn't conform to Apple's standards, but this really is the market-wide standard.
  • iSEPIC, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0good, finally going in the right direction. Yeah I'd pay 99c for a movie, but not an itunes, until then, I agree with tufriast, where is allofmpeg.com? :-)
  • Phoenixfury, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I think this is great! I don't have cable because my housemate ran up the cable bill and owes Comcast a lot of $$$. I'm certainly not going to pay the cable bill for him, but this leaves me in the dark for getting any of the premium channels obviously. To me this is better because I can get all the on demand movies I want. I'm definitely Digging this!
  • Evari, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0ok so the WMV and DRM suck, but hopefully this will encourage other studios to follow suit, and as competition increases things can only get better
  • mgrace74, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Why not, it's cheaper than buying the dvds.
  • Protoss, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0The cable companies are already charging us for cable, so why not just give us some username/pass that allows us to download the shows we either missed, or loved, and let us watch them over and over again.
  • Willy99, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0yes... downloadable.... but you only can watch them for a few days...and then the files destroy themselves. can't port them... yuck.

    i suggest you check out Like Television - the site offers - free to watch content (ad supported).
    AND downloads - that you can port to your ipod, that don't destroy themselves... you can burn them
    to a cd for back up - they even offer DVD iso file downloads. What's not to like. the downloads are subscription only - but you get to keep the files... and put them on your iPod.
    http://tesla.liketelevision.com - the streams are free... check it out.
  • irishfreakout, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I'm not sure why people always assume Microsoft is always behind windows-only based programs. Vongo was developed by Starz in-house and has nothing to do with Microsoft. It is only windows-based because its the FIRST RELEASE of an unproven product and they naturally want to target the largest audience available: windows users.

    This may not be the best service for everyone, but its a step in the right direction. You have to give Starz kudos for getting the studios to allow their movies to be downloaded (albeit non transferable with expiration dates). Once the studios can swallow this they we will hopefully start to consider more flexible downloadable services.
  • digitalant, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0It'd be nice if they started broadcasting in HD before downgrading their quality!
  • Odweaver, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0The all of MPEG idea is stupid, especially if they charge by meg, you could buy movies in store for cheaper that have dvd quality.
  • pondster, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0OK, figured I would give it a shot. This is an additional LAME from my previous post.
    Min CPU - P3 600, 128 megs ram. My pc in the living room is 700mhz with 684megs ram and a decent video card. Took forever to download, dont know why they limited me to a 136kbps connection when I have a 6meg connection. So I finally get the movie on my system (waited for it to fully download rather than download and play at the same time) and it played like a stop motion movie, maybe a frame a second. I might try it on my big machine later but the movie selection still sucks.
  • ermau, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0You guys really need to read the ***** article. Real and no portable devices is what it USED to be, not what the new service will be.
  • RAT-Man, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Problem is that Starz has no movies of real interest.
  • Wolfman~K, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0So this amounts to what.... all 4 of the new movies Stars shows a month being available for $2.49 each? heheheh

    This is another veiled attempt to set a precedent for criminalizing the users who already legally record their stars subscription and watch it on the device of their choice.

    Stop putting rules on it. Make the content freely available to the consume and we will happily pay for it. Make it difficult and its "you" that drives the piracy up.

    http://kaseiffert.is.dreaming.org
  • thomashawk, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Why pay for this service from when I can essentially get the same content and do basically the same thing with the content for no additional cost with my Media Center today?

    http://thomashawk.com/2006/01/why-use-starz-vongo-service-for-remote.html
  • Sirocco, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Edit:

    The worst part is... they will say "We tried to reach out to downloaders, but they didn't bite!" then use it as an excuse to push for stronger DRM.
  • jerbaker, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0WMV. 'Nough said. There were several attempts by the music studios and others to start online music sales, but they all fell flat on their face. If you graph the correlation between DRM restrictions and sales, you see that it is directly inverse. I don't care because I'll just use utorrent to download what I want in the format I want. If they want to compete, then they're going to have to provide what I want.
  • Sirocco, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Ain't gonna work. If they did it per show for a flat fee ($2.50 per movie, or whatnot) and provided it through a non-DRM container with something decent like H.264 encoding, it'd fly. But this ***** is barftastic, and won't sell at all.
  • AllNewRelease, on 05/24/2008, -0/+0Hi,

    Try http://AllNewRelease.com

    it's pretty awesome website with new movies and scene releases... the best part is.. it's all FREE Download... :D
  • g30ph, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0This sucks until it is included with a paid cable subscription. For every channel. And I want rips encoded in 5.1 xvid.
  • ratso2, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0man that is not that bad cause you save like $20 buying it!
  • antdude, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Ha! It tells me my Mozilla v1.7.12 is from the time of stone tablets... And it lists Mozilla v1.7.5 as a support. What?? No service from me, but dugg for trying.
  • Durrok, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Give me all HighDef with an unlimited download speed that I OWN.... NO DRM, I can do whatever I want with it because it is like I bought the DVD, and I would be willing to pay DVD prices for each one. After all, if you don't have digital cable and they don't broadcast in high def in your area, where else are you going to get high def content until the circle jerk between HD-DVD and Blu-Ray gets settled?

    On another note, anyone know how big a HD movie would be? If I recall correctly it was something nuts like 30+ gigs... might not be too viable until the media to burn it out.
  • Phoenixfury, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Thomashawk "Why pay for this service from when I can essentially get the same content and do basically the same thing with the content for no additional cost with my Media Center today?"

    I do understand what your saying, and I'm really big on Media Center. I hoping Vongo get's added to Media Center personally. However in regards to your question, not everyone has cable. I live in a household where the cable bill was in my roommate's name and he let that slide. So basically I'm screwed unless I move which isn't a viable option for me right now. My only recourse for downloadable movie content is broadcast (yes I know that sucks, especially on Media Center) and downloading content online. This service is really for the minority of people that either can't afford or get cable.
  • liquidedge, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I don't get why everyone is worried. There will be Divx encodes of all the content soon enough on Bit Torrent. Though I would rather pay for it and get it first hand, if they won't support my Palm device, so be it.
  • Shaner84, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0This is stupid its only available in the US. Why do company's continue to ignore Canada and the rest of the world? We would buy it to?
  • FuManchu, on 10/12/2007, -0/+01. If it only plays on M$ software the deal SUX.
    2. Some people will still buy it.
    3. Netflix makes more sense, financially. And it doesn't clog up internet bandwidth with a bunch of crap that is really designed to make more money for greedy purveyors of poor quality content.
  • xrayspex, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0This Starz service has been on "Real Player" for over 2 years now.
    The only difference is they are now also using Windows Media Player
  • etherdog, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0Super lame! WinXP only. So is movielink.
  • xrayspex, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0This is NOT a new service- just a gigantic PR stunt for "Starz".
    Starz has had the exact same service through Real Player for over 2 years now.
    All they did was change the name to "Vongo" and included Windows Media Player along with Real to watch the films.
    Same EXACT service STARZ has had on Real Playerl for over two years!
  • BlueStarr, on 10/12/2007, -2/+0WMV? barf!

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