Movie Downloading 101

By Maryanne Murray Buechner

It was right around the time Ben Stiller turned up at a Bat Mitzvah disguised as a mime that I started to yearn for the couch. But I had downloaded Starsky & Hutch to my home-office computer. And even though the picture looked great in full-screen mode on my 17in. monitor, with none of the jerkiness that sometimes plagues online video streams, I had my feet propped up on a printer, and my husband had to stand behind me to see Stiller strut his stuff. Not what I had in mind for movie night.

Millions of people have figured out how to download movies, using file-sharing services that traffic in other people's pirated copies. But acquiring movies this way is problematic, not to mention illegal: sometimes it works, sometimes you accidentally get porn. And sometimes the studios catch you. Here's how you can do it legally:

THE SERVICES I tried MOVIELINK movielink.com) which is industry backed, CINEMANOW cinemanow.com and STARZ! TICKET ON REAL MOVIES (movies.real com) which debuted in June. Each service works a bit differently, but the goal is the same: to deliver major studio releases to your PC in a secure format that's "near DVD" quality. Movielink and CinemaNow charge from $1 to $5 for each 24-hour rental. Starz! charges $12.95 a month for unlimited downloads, but its library is smaller (150 selected titles vs. Movielink's 900 at any one time).

THE CONNECTION To use one of these services, you need a high-speed Internet connection. Starz! won't let you in the door unless your DSL or cable modem is clocking at least 600 kilobits per second. (Tip: you can test your line at toast.net/ performance. If you think Starz! is rejecting you without merit, try again later; the site's speed meter is not always right.)

THE SOFTWARE You'll need either RealPlayer or Windows Media Player installed on your machine. (They provide the viewing window as well as the pause and other controls.) When you click to subscribe for the first time, the service will prompt you to download the appropriate program (or to update your current version), which can take several minutes. Then you'll have to download another piece of software (needed to manage your access to the restricted files), which takes another minute or so. If you have a firewall in place, a message window will pop up, asking if you want to let that new program through. (Weary yet?)

THE TAKEAWAY The movie files are huge--around 500 MB or bigger--so downloads can take hours, but all three services allow you to start viewing within a few minutes. If your PC and your TV both have S-Video ports, you can use an S-Video cable to connect them--and watch your movie on the bigger screen. Sadly, I never could get Stuart Little to show up on our 27-in. set. But we're in luck, I tell the kids: Mr. Video down the street has it on DVD. --By Maryanne Murray Buechner