Initially, there was video rental. You could pay a visit to your favorite location, either a standalone establishment or possibly a corner of your grocery store, pay a number 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 might be found every few miles, and since they could not provide a big enough selection, the local supermarkets basically got out of the film rental business.

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

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

At long last, it looks as even though we might have arrived at the greatest movies-at-home solution: movie downloading. Whenever 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, there are actually several methods used to get 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 begin to watch your movie almost instantly, and the price can be very reasonable… in fact, a couple of 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 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 really is streaming.

Another method used to download movies online is a rental concept. Basically, you can 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’re going to expire after a particular period. This will likely vary by service and be from twenty four hours to 30 days.

Finally, it really is possible to download complete movies, burn them to DVD, and watch them on your TV, home entertainment center, computer, or anywhere else, just like any movie that you’ve got purchased in a store. Costs for this can differ widely, and you’ll 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’re willing to shop around a bit, you will almost definitely locate a movie download plan that can fit your requirements and accommodate your lifestyle.