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SAN JOSE, Calif.
— Digital video — movies and television shows you
can download from the Internet — has a bright future.
But to get there, providers need to work out some
problems.
That hit
home recently when I decided to rent a video with my
kids. Our local
Blockbuster
had closed, so I thought it would be a good time to
check out online offerings.
What I
found was both fun and frustration. We found a great
movie in high definition — "The Music Man."
But it took a lot of searching to find the video and it
expired before we had time to watch it all the way
through.
Unfortunately,
our experience was not unusual. Digital video holds out
the promise of letting you watch nearly any movie and
television show ever made whenever and wherever you
want. But so far that's not the reality.
Getting
digital video onto a big-screen television has often
required expensive or complicated equipment that few
consumers owned. Even then, many digital-video devices
offered only a small slice of the videos consumers could
find on their desktop PCs.
The
situation has gotten better. Digital video services are
now available — or soon will be — through each of
the three main video game consoles, which are already in
millions of American homes. Such services are also being
built into the latest televisions, Blu-ray DVD players
and set-top boxes.
Digital
video providers such as Apple's iTunes store,
Amazon.com
and
Netflix
now offer thousands of movies and television shows,
including many of the latest releases and a growing
number in high definition. While you can't find every
movie yet, you can probably find something you want to
watch.
But
consumers still face plenty of frustrations.
Each
service has its own video selection and none is
comprehensive. So while the movie you're looking for may
be available for download somewhere, it may not be
available through the service you have on your device.
Pixar's
"Up," for example is only available through
iTunes. While
Amazon.com
offers "The Music Man" for download, you can't
find it through
Netflix
or the video rental services offered on
Sony's
PlayStation 3 or
Microsoft's
Xbox 360.
Some
devices try to address this problem by offering several
different services. You can access
Netflix
and Amazon's video store through the Roku gadget, and
Netflix
and
Microsoft's
own Zune service through the
Microsoft's
Xbox 360.
But it's
often difficult to search for videos across different
services. With the Roku device, you have to search
Amazon and
Netflix
separately when looking for a particular movie; you
can't search across both collections at the same time.
And you
may not find the video you want at a price you want to
pay. Television episodes and the latest movie releases
typically are available only for purchase; you can't
rent them. Other videos are available only for rental;
you can't buy them or stream them. Some may be available
only through
Netflix
streaming, which requires a monthly subscription.
Another
potential frustration is that each of the services
offers videos wrapped in a copy protection scheme that's
incompatible with anyone else's. So if you buy or rent a
movie from one service, you can only watch it on a
device that's compatible with that service.
That can
be a pain with rentals. If you have multiple digital
video devices or devices with multiple services, you
have to remember the device and service on which you
rented the video to watch it again. With purchased
videos, the aggravation can be worse. Unless you
continue to have a device compatible with the service on
which you bought the movie, you run the risk of not
being able to watch it in the future. That can be a lot
to swallow, especially if you've spent
$15
or more to own a seemingly permanent copy.
But it's
the rental terms that I found to be the biggest problem
with digital video. With most rentals, once you start
watching the video, you have just 24 hours before your
access expires. That may be OK if you can watch a video
all the way through without stopping. With two small
kids, I'm not there. If you're like me, you may have to
pay another
$4
or
$5
rental fee if you can't finish a video the first time
around.
That
limitation seems out of touch with what's happened with
DVD rentals. As long as you keep paying your monthly
subscription, you can have a DVD checked out from
Netflix
for as long as you like. You can have a video checked
out from
Blockbuster
for a week or more without incurring any late fees. And
with Redbox's kiosk service, you pay just
$1
each day you have a DVD out.
I'm
hopeful digital video services will continue to get
better. But for now, you might find it less frustrating
to subscribe to
Netflix
or to visit your local
Blockbuster
— if you still have one.
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