To start with, there was video rental. You could pay a visit to your favorite location, either a standalone establishment or possibly a corner of your food store, pay a couple of dollars, and go back home to enjoy a movie on your VHS or Betamax (remember those?) VCR.

Then came DVDs. Movie renting became more popular, standalone rental stores could be found every few miles, and since they could not offer a large enough selection, the local supermarkets just about got out of the movie rental business.

The home movie-watching market took a leap forward in the event the cable industry began to offer “Video on Demand.” Now you might choose a film, view it at your leisure, have it charged to your monthly cable bill, and never need to leave your home. In exchange for this convenience, you were offered a much more limited selection than you might have if you got in your car and drove to your local video store.

The problem of limited selection was quickly solved, on the contrary, with the advent of mail-order movie rental. A subscription to a mail-order movie rental service would enable you to decide on literally tens of thousands of free full movie titles, set them up in your rental queue, as well as have them mailed directly to your door. Generally, although, the trade-off was time. Once you mailed back the film you had finished watching, it took a few days for another one to arrive.

At long last, it looks as although we might have arrived at the greatest movies-at-home solution: movie downloading. When you download your movies online, your selection is virtually unlimited, your wait time is minimal, and your costs are affordable.

According to the online service you choose, you’ll find several methods used to acquire movies online. The first is streaming video. You can stream video either to your computer or to a device attached to your television. You may start to watch your movie almost instantly, and also the price is quite reasonable… in fact, several subscription services include unlimited streaming video in your membership package. The one drawback to streaming video is that you can’t save the movie to a DVD or any other storage medium and take it with you for watching elsewhere or in the future; you are limited by viewing it on the device to which it’s streaming.

Another method used to download movies online is a rental concept. Basically, you may download the movie to a storage device (computer hard drive, TiVo, even an iPod or video game console), and watch it at your convenience. Since you are only “renting” these movies and not purchasing them, they are going to expire after a specified period. This will likely vary by service and be anywhere from 24 hours to 30 days.

Finally, it’s possible to download complete movies, burn them to DVD, and watch them on your TV, home entertainment center, computer, or elsewhere, as with every movie that you’ve got purchased in a shop. Costs due to this will vary widely, and you will find movies priced anywhere from what you should pay in a retail store, to “clearance bin” pricing, to membership and subscription plans.

In conclusion, downloading your movies online may be the ultimate in twenty-first century convenience. If you are ready to shop around a bit, you will most likely locate a movie download plan that may fit your preferences and accommodate your lifestyle.