Why pay to download movies and TV shows on the Internet?

When considering either the ubiquitous iTunes, Amazon’s Unbox service, SatelliteSoft’s My Download Center or any of the pay per download, media-on-demand or paid streaming services available on the internet, you may be asking yourself “Why should I pay for this when I can get it for free?” It’s true that there’s lots of sites out there offering free downloads of lots of different content, much of it the same as what you might find on the paid services. So why pay?

Read on for a few reasons why investing a few bucks in a legitimate content delivery service can make your downloaded or streamed media experience a bit more convenient and a lot safer.

1. Convenience

Do you value your time?

If you do, then my guess is you don’t want to spend hours sweating in front of the computer screen searching aimlessly for that elusive episode or film you are dying to watch. The fact is that unless what you want to see is new or particularly popular, it can take a bit of searching to find. That searching usually entails weaving through shady webpages with spam ads and spyware ready to jump down your Ethernet line an put your computer into a coma, or desperately seeking a torrent with enough seeds that it won’t take until July next year to download.

2. Legality

This is a big issue if you are a moral consumer of media, and also if you just don’t want to have the MPAA emailing your ISP and have them suspend your internet service. Pretty much anywhere where you can download a movie or TV show for free, with a (very) exceptions, is running an illegal operation. Of course it’s unlikely a swat team is going to come bursting through the living room window, but repercussions can and do happen to average Joes who just download a movie every now and then. This can mean anything from the minor inconvenience of having your internet account suspended or cancelled, to full fledged subpoenas and letters from lawyers (don’t snicker, it happens all the time).

3. Quality

Quality is another issue. Anyone who takes their media seriously is concerned over quality issues. Of course not everyone refuses to watch anything that’s not HD Blu Ray and Dolby 5.1, but there’s nothing more frustrating that downloading a movie that on playback is grainy or pixilated, at low resolution, or the absolute worst - is filmed on a camcorder in the back of a cinema somewhere. Another huge gripe is Audio/Video sync problems. When the actors words and mouths don’t match up (unless it’s a kung fu movie) it is unbearable to watch, and for me at least, renders a film completely unwatchable.

4. Safety

Safety first is a good rule to go by, and while it’s not you that’s in mortal danger, your PC could be. With the huge amount of spyware, adware, viruses, dialers, Trojans and any and all manner of nasty programs that float around on peer to peer networks these days, it’s entirely wise to avoid them all together.

It’s unfortunate but true that with media downloads such as TV shows, Movies and MP3s being so popular on these networks, they represent the perfect pony for malicious programs to hitch a ride on. Once you’ve downloaded your data and executed it on your PC, the nasty little horseman, fresh from his free ride straight into your computer, will set up shop and start wrecking up the place.

For the above reasons and many more, it pays to have a legitimate source for your downloaded, streamed or play-on-demand media. The small price you might have to invest has great value when you consider the benefits in convenience, quality and safety.

Click here to check out My Movie Download Centre and get unlimited downloads of high quality, safe and legal Movies and TV Shows.

About the Author

Seth Gecko spends too much time watching TV. In between episodes of the X-files and Tarantino movies, he can occaisonally be found writing articles. Click here to see where he gets all his free movies, TV shows and Music.

amazon, average joes, computer screen, content delivery service, exceptions, free downloads, illegal operation, itunes, legitimate content, media experience, minor inconvenience, mpaa, quality quality, repercussions, satellitesoft, streaming services, subpoenas, swat team, time 3, unbox

Popularity: 25% [?]

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

This entry was posted on Friday, February 1st, 2008 at 8:23 pm and is filed under Articles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.