Gadgetell | Tech News, Reviews, and Interesting Things

AOL, 20th Century Fox, Sony Pictures, Universal Pictures, and Warner Bros. have teamed up to offer consumers downloadable movies through the AOL Video portal. These new partnerships build on AOLs current 17 video partnerships and 45 on-demand channels that AOL Video announced in July. The AOL Video portal is a one-stop destination to find, watch and share millions of free streaming and pay-to-download video content from broadcast and cable television, and movies.

Through AOL Video, popular movie titles - from recent DVD releases to a large selection of movies representing all genres will be available for purchase and download with prices ranging from $9.99 to $19.99 per movie. Once downloaded, movies can be viewed offline as well as on other PCs and compatible portable devices.

As part of AOL Video’s ongoing expansion of its video-on-demand line up, television content from Fox and Sony Pictures will be easily accessible through the AOL Video portal’s online interactive programming guide (IPG). The AOL Video IPG brings together free and download-to-own video content and organizes it into more than 50 video-on-demand channels. Additional AOL Video on-demand channels will launch in the coming months.

AOL Video will feature Fox and Sony content, for paid download within five new on-demand channels: Fox, Fox Classic Television, FX, Speed, Fuel TV, AXN, and FunnyBone.

CinemaNow has been selling downloaded movies since April, the same time as MovieLink. When released, the movies were restricted to PC only viewing, and the downloads included only the film. Now at the same time as MovieLink again, CinemaNow will offer more features including bonus material, like filmmakers’ commentary and extra scenes as well as the ability to burn the video to a DVD. It will take about three hours to download and burn a movie, typically requiring advanced decisions or settling with watching the first view from your PC and later burning the disc.

Initially, CinemaNow will offer about 100 older titles, including “Scent of a Woman,” “Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle” and “Barbershop.” Prices will be about $9 to $15, the same as the films sold in versions that could be downloaded only to computers. CinemaNow has chosen to use different copy-protection technology made by a German company, Ace.

I am not sure which offering is better, burning now with a long wait and poorer quality than in the store, or waiting till next year for MovieLink, or just doing Netflix. Any of you use MovieLink or CinemaNow?

Read [NYTimes]