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Glimpse of future for online movies

By MIKE LANGBERG
Knight Ridder Newspapers

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Movies recorded on tape and disc for home viewing, bought or rented from stores or delivered by mail.

Sara will give me one of those adolescent "Oh, Dad, you dinosaur" looks when I try to tell her that high-definition movies weren't always available on demand through an ultra-high-speed Internet connection for download in three minutes.

Then she'll pop her one-ounce cellphone into her ear and demand the keys to the family hover-car.

Meanwhile, back in the year 2004, we're just getting started with movies online. The process is slow and somewhat convoluted, but the new and awkwardly named Starz Ticket on Real Movies service does a good job of showing where we're headed.

RealNetworks, best known for its media player, and Starz Encore Group, best known for the Starz and Encore cable service, have teamed up to offer unlimited downloads from a rotating library of 100 movies for $12.95 a month.

Starz on Real (movies.real.com), which launched June 14, has a limited appeal for now. I'd say it makes sense only for people who travel frequently and want to watch a lot of movies on a laptop computer. But the service and its competitors are blazing a trail that will eventually become a crowded highway.

You need three things to get started with Starz on Real: a Windows computer running either Windows 98 Second Edition, Windows Millennium Edition, Windows 2000 or Windows XP; the most current version of RealNetworks' free RealPlayer 10 software; and a high-speed Internet connection such as a cable modem or DSL line.

You sign up with a credit card and get access to 100 Hollywood movies, most of recent vintage, that are running or have run on Starz's cable service. You also get a live feed of the Starz East channel.

About 25 movies are added to the roster every Monday, and 25 are removed.

You can download as many movies as your hard disk will hold, and watch them as many times as you want until they drop out of the lineup.
 
The movies are big digital files, averaging 300 megabytes per hour of running time, so most titles are 450 to 750 MB. One subscription entitles you to download movies onto three computers, and you can shift downloaded movies among your three machines by burning them to CD, transferring them to an external hard drive or sending them through a home network connection.

I tested Starz on Real using my Compaq Presario 2500 laptop, which has a spacious 60-gigabyte hard drive, and my Comcast cable modem.

Download took about half of running time. A two-hour movie, in other words, would download in about an hour, a 90-minute movie in about 45 minutes. That works out to roughly 1.3 megabits per second, typical for a cable modem. DSL lines are often somewhat slower, while office networks can be much faster.

Real lets you stack up a list of movies to download, so you can pick five or six titles to collect overnight. You don't need to be online to watch movies you've downloaded.

Shown full-screen on my laptop, the movies looked surprisingly good — almost equal to a DVD. There were few of the "artifacts" that plague highly compressed video, such as images that break up into tiny squares or jerky movement in fast action scenes. The audio also was clear.

I then connected the laptop to my home-theater projector and watched on a big screen. The audio quality was still good, but I could see a few more video defects, such as slight jitter in action scenes. Still, the overall effect was still adequate for suspension of disbelief; even on the big screen I could forget that I wasn't watching a movie from videotape or a cable channel.

The live stream of Starz East looked almost as good as the downloads, although outbursts of sluggishness by my cable modem would occasionally freeze the picture.

Starz on Real has two main competitors: CinemaNow (www.cinemanow.com) and MovieLink (www.movielink.com), both of which offer downloadable pay-per-view movies. For a fee of $3 to $5, you get to watch the downloaded movie for 24 hours. You have to pay again, although often a lower fee, to continue watching after the first 24-hour window expires.

Disney also is testing a service called MovieBeam (www.moviebeam.com) that doesn't use the Internet. Instead, movies are transmitted over the air to a set-top box with a hard drive that stores about a hundred titles. Subscribers pay a small monthly fee to lease the box, and a fee for each movie viewed.

For now, the long download times and difficulty of connecting a computer to a television make Starz on Real, CinemaNow and MovieLink less than practical for most people. However, faster Internet connections and wireless-home-entertainment networks will ultimately demolish those roadblocks before Sara is old enough to notice.

Microsoft Optical Mouse by Starck

If you're into design, then the name of Philippe Starck is no stranger to you. Starck Design continues to produce beautiful industrial designs for the home, furnishings, automotive, watches, clothing and now the computer. Teaming up with Microsoft, the renowned designer has come up with the Microsoft Optical Mouse by Starck. It's a thing of beauty.

Envision an ambidextrous matte finish, silver-toned ovoid mouse with two equal-sized hemisphere sections split lengthwise down its center. Serving as a divider between the sections that also serve as the mouse's left and right buttons is a glowing band of colored light. Available colors are either neon orange or electric blue that glow with an intense energy that just won't quit.

The reason it can continuously glow so brightly is that the Starck mouse comes only as a corded version. Since the mouse draws its power directly from the computer and no batteries are necessary, the light can be much brighter than what is typically found on battery-operated optical cordless versions that must conserve their energy more efficiently. The mouse also sports the familiar scroll wheel/button that's translucent and glows in the same color.

If you're looking for something that's different when it comes to your computer's mouse, this sleek looking, high-tech rodent should definitely be on your list. Works with Windows or Macintosh. $34.95.

— Craig Crossman, Knight Ridder Newspapers