I received an intriguing email offer to download a movie from Movielink for only $0.99. I normally wouldn’t be interested in such online offers but thought this was an exception since renting a movie from Blockbuster would cost nearly 5X as much. Besides, I consider myself a user of new technology and have an HTPC setup conducive to watching video files comfortably on my television. So I decided to try it.
I clicked on the email link which had a coupon code to get my first download for $0.99. The webpage opened and I hit my first minor complaint.
Sorry, but in order to enjoy the Movielink service you must use Internet Explorer 5.0 or higher, which supports certain technologies we utilize for downloading movies…
We do not support Mozilla or Netscape. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.
Apparently, they require some functions specific to Internet Explorer. I am a happy Firefox user, so this was slightly annoying but not outrageous. So I fired up IE and pointed it to the Movielink site. This time the page open with out a hiccup. The first thing I noticed was a big orange advertisement for a $0.99 download. I guess my email coupon code was unnecessary (probably just a way to keep track of referrals, mine came from PCMag.com). The first thing I did was to click on the "Terms of Use" link at the bottom of the page. I wanted to know what was involved in downloading movies, how long before my content expired, extra costs, if any additional software was necessary, etc.