With this Watch Free Movies Online Guide, I hope to help you find and watch free movies online in legal and safe fashion. I’ll also help you find places to rent unlimited DVDs and Blu-rays.

We’ll keep things clean and legal… I suspect many people don’t know about all the quality, legal sites out there to help you watch free movies online and watch free television online. I’m here to save you time and money by identifying and reviewing great resources for you to enjoy.

You will also find a remarkable number of devices on which you can just start to watch free movies online now. Whether you want to watch from your laptop, your gaming console, your netbook or even your smartphones, you will find apps or services enabling you to watch free movies on the internet with ease.

I will also cover both the major services such as Hulu and Netflix and lesser known services such as Cinema Now and StarzPlay.

Watch Movies On the Internet

The trick is to keep abreast on the latest and greatest sites because sites fall in and out of favor over time. This is, obviously, pretty difficult and time-consuming, so I encourage you to regularly return to watchfree-moviesonline.com to keep abreast of the latest. Sometimes a site can’t keep up with the volume of traffic their servers must survive because quality video requires so much bandwidth (which stresses the servers themselves and can cost lots of money to maintain). And sometimes sites fall out of favor because they push the line a little too much and draw negative attention from film publishers.

Netflix Unlimited Streaming Video & DVD Rentals – Try For FREE

Currently I’m loving Netflix. With their lengthy & generous free trial, you can stream all the classic and current movies & television shows you can possibly watch for nothing. You can even stream the video through your Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Nintendo Wii or may Blu-ray players at no additional cost. And this is a free addition to their already classic DVD rental service (with fast, free shipping and no late fees):

I have over a dozen quality sites I will introduce to you over the coming weeks. They’re all legal and they all provide a high quality viewing experience. And yes we’ll be looking far beyond sites like YouTube. There’s some great stuff out there and I look forward to collecting my reviews and lessons so you can easily watch movies on the internet.

I’ll discuss and provide three primary methods:

1. Watch free movies online through streaming video in your web browser.
2. Download free online movies by saving them to your computer and watching them with video player software.
3. Membership sites that combine these types of services & require a very small fee.

Watch Streaming Video With Reliability

You may be wondering how I could put paid membership sites in this list considering the name of my website.
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This is because the quality and security of some of these services is well worth the very small amount they cost. Many of these services are smaller businesses striving to make a name for themselves, so they provide remarkably generous offerings for far less than better-known big company services like Netflix. Many people don’t know about these companies (at least not yet), so it would be unfair for me to not point them out.

In addition, these paid services often tend to be more reliable than free sites and they likely will also feature much greater longevity. As you follow my progress with this website, you’ll see that only a few sites remain consistently worth your time.

Many of them — even some that are very good for several months at a time — will disappear just as soon as I find them. I wish it wasn’t the case, but this doesn’t happen with fully paid, legit services which operate with the blessing of the major networks and film studios. But don’t fret if you’re anti-corporate! Many of the best watch free movies online services are actually smaller, independent organizations with big web ambitions.

Update:

Return visitors to www.watchfree-moviesonline.com may notice I’ve removed a service to which I linked here. After spending some time with this service, I couldn’t in good conscience link to it from my site. It just isn’t worth the money. I will soon publish a review teaching how you can do and obtain everything it offered for free in an entirely legal fashion. Basically, I feel the service exploits people who aren’t terribly net savvy by trying to profit from services and open-source applications that are freely available to anyone who knows about them.

So that’s enough negativity…

My first reviews are now ready. Visit the Download Movies Legally section to find detailed and comprehensive reviews of the Amazon Unbox service as well as the competing CinemaNow and Vongo services.

Let’s get ready to enjoy all the Internet has to offer with Watch Free Movies Online

My Watch Free Movies Online blog is long over due for an update. It is more exciting than ever to watch free movies online now. The quality keeps improving, as you can now watch high definition movies online, and you can watch movies online from almost anywhere now.

I am planning whole new sections for the site. I will have a section targeting smartphones like the iPhone or the various Google-based Android phones. The number of apps and services available for watching movies online on the go is remarkable compared to just over two years ago when I started this blog. In the time since, we’ve not only moved online and into the cloud with our entertainment, but we’ve become more mobile than ever.

Another section I am planning for watchfree-moviesonline.com will focus on set tops. This includes the Roku player as well as various blu-ray based players that integrate streaming video services into their firmware. I personally have an excellent Samsung blu-ray player I use at home for watching high-definition movies and television shows through Netflix and occasionally Hulu.

I’m not yet sure how I will handle the streaming video through gaming systems. The Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and Nintendo Wii are all now Netflix-capable as well as presenting some additional features and capabilities unique to each platform. Should I place them in their own category or combine them with the set top players? I’m leaning towards putting them in their own categories, as services like the Xbox Live Marketplace are pretty unique entities.

I also need to update all my reviews of the various streaming movies services. Vongo closed and is now replaced with StarzPlay, while CinemaNow and Vudu soldier on in relative obscurity. Hulu has also gone live with their paid services and YouTube now offers a whole chunk of movies for free. Didn’t know about those free YouTube movies? Just go to YouTube.com/movies to find them.

I hope this helps enliven my site and bring more useful information on how to watch free movies online for my readers.

So a reader asked me a simple question that I thought I would try to answer with a quick blog post here. Apparently I go into a too much detail with some of my posts when some people finding my site are just looking for a quick fix.

If you want to watch a movie online right now, where would I direct you?

This question actually implies some subtext, some unasked questions. Namely, what websites should I visit, what services are the cheapest or most likely to truly be free, and which are the easiest to use for quick and easy instant gratification for watching free films online.

First, this almost always means, where can I go to watch streaming video free. Stick to watchfree-moviesonline.com and we’ll find you the best answer.

Thankfully I have a pretty easy answer for you. I try to keep people up-to-date on the best sites and services to watch free movies online, so here’s my best bet for you if you want to watch a movie online right now.

My favorites right now are Hulu and Netflix. There are others, but Hulu is free and Netflix features a generous free trial. Netflix is head and shoulders above all others when it comes to their catalog, but it is a step more difficult to use than Hulu because you have to take the time to register for the free trial.

I hope this answers this simple question, where should I go to watch a movie online right now.

If you follow my blog at all, you will know that I have encouraged people to discover and enjoy Hulu. Hulu is an excellent and easy-to-use website with loads of full length, high quality television shows and movies.

And the irony of this is that there may be too many easy-to-watch shows on Hulu. At least according to some television network executives. Apparently, the networks are fearing that the increasing views on Hulu will hurt the real TV viewer numbers and thus hurt their ability to keep advertising revenue.

I found a great article on Wired discussing this matter. Here’s a vital bit:

Kilar, a longtime Amazon exec, knows what the Internet is teaching audiences to expect: The ability to watch any show, day or night. And he’s adept at explaining this new reality in a way that emphasizes its potential. “This is a tectonic shift,” he told me when I profiled Hulu last year for Wired, “and what it does is allow network heads to find the audience they always should have had but couldn’t reach.” But not everybody sees it that way.

A story in yesterday’s Los Angeles Times sums up what he’s facing: Fear. It’s certainly understandable. Television networks, and the Hollywood studios that make programming for them, are experiencing declining ad sales, declining DVD sales, and rising panic. “We have to find ways to advance the business rather than cannibalize it,” said the distribution chief at Turner — a network that refuses to make shows like The Closer available on Hulu and keeps only a few episodes on its own site.

That would be nice, but the problem is that if you don’t cannibalize yourself, somebody else will do it for you. “You can’t protect old business models artificially,” I was told by Peter Chernin, the outgoing president of Fox’s parent company, News Corporation. Television execs who doubt him might want to check with their friends in the newspaper industry.

Or better yet, just look at the paper itself. The same startlingly thin issue of the LA Times that carried the Hulu story featured an article about Craigslist and its policies regarding classifieds, most of which are free. Not so long ago, classified ads were a dependable cash cow for the newspaper business. But yesterday’s Craigslist article was followed, in the print edition, by a mere three pages of classifieds, liberally padded by display ads for the Times itself, with another three pages lurking at the end of the sports section. This for a metropolitan area of nearly 13 million people.

For more, read the full article here: Hulu, a Victim of Its Own Success?

I say go support Hulu as much as you can. The watch anything, anywhere anytime premise is the future, and as the article states, if they don’t utilize this market their shows will be cannibalized without their control.

Thank you for reading Watch Free Movies Online and go support your favorite streaming video website!

It seems the phenomenon of watching a film online has dramatically changed in just the last six to ten months or so. Just six to ten months ago, you could easily enjoy a few movies online, but it was still a little bit of a novelty. Many laymen computer or internet users had no idea it was even a possibility.

Now it seems the luxury of watching movies online has moved into the mainstream. A lot of people aren’t necessarily aware how it works but they’re probably at least aware that it is a possibility. And with the way Hulu has been advertised, I suspect more and more people will be hooking their computers up to their television sets and watching more and more movies online.

My personal favorite setup is to just open YouTube, Hulu and Netflix in three separate tabs within my favorite browser (Firefox), then watch away. It has never been easier to watch free movies online in a legal and legit fashion.

For those of you who think you still need Internet Explorer to watch Netflix, haven’t you heard of Silverlight? Installing Silverlight in your install of Firefox will allow you to watch Netflix movies online using Firefox just like Internet Explorer.

I do have some new reviews coming your way. There are additional subscription services and web-based video rental services which I’ll be reviewing in the coming weeks. Thanks for visiting and reading Watch Free Movies Online!

Friends frequently ask me the general question, how can I watch TV on my computer? The answer can be different depending on exactly what they mean with this question. For example, when I watch TV on my computer, it simply means I visit sites like Netflix, Hulu or YouTube to watch my favorite TV shows online through streamed video.

These resources, as well resources available on different television networks’ sites (like NBC or HBO), allow you to watch streaming video free. This is really a simple matter of visiting the appropriate website then clicking on a link to load the television show you would like to view.

How Do I Watch TV On My Computer?

However, when some people ask me “how to watch TV on my computer?” they sometimes mean they’re asking me how to connect their computer to their cable tv or satellite tv subscription line and literally view TV through a TV tuner on their PC. This is a perfectly legitimate way to watch tv on your computer. However, they’re two completely different concepts.

The first way I described above involves tapping into the new and exciting resources available online to watch tv online. In addition to simply watching the same shows you view on standard TV, when you watch Internet TV you’ll discover a whole new world of television programming. As you read more and more of watchfree-moviesonline.com you’ll learn what kind of opportunities exist.

The second way I described in that last paragraph involves simply using your computer to watch traditional television programming, just like you’re sitting on your couch in your living room watching prime time TV.

As you can probably tell from the name of my website, my specialty is online video, so this article will primarily focus on the first concept I described. I really like to watch tv on my pc and it was fun learning how to watch tv on my computer when I discovered the extensive world of digital entertainment available to me when I watch TV on the Internet.

However, if there is enough demand from readers I will also add a section (or another page) describing how to install a TV tuner (either a hardware version or a software version for modern computers) in your computer so you can watch tv on your pc.
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In particular, I like to watch tv on my laptop because I can then watch my favorite TV shows anywhere anytime. This affords me far greater flexibility than I could ever manage with the old world of strict television schedules. I can watch tv on my computer while sitting in a cozy coffee shop or — with a 3G card, I can even enjoy the latest hit dramas or sitcoms while out hiking in nature.

Set Up Streaming Video On Your Computer

So how do you go about watching TV on your computer. First you need a somewhat modern computer, then make sure you update your video drivers. For the most part, any computer manufactured and sold in the last 3 or 4 years should be more than enough. I suggest you update your video drivers because Windows Vista in particular can have problems processing higher quality streaming video if you don’t have up-to-date video drivers. Your computer manufacturer should make it fairly easy to find, download and install the latest drivers.

The next thing you need is… a web browser! I know you have one of those or else you couldn’t be reading this online video article right now, now could you? You can use Internet Explorer 6 or above, Firefox 2 or above, Opera or Safari. There are some services, like Netflix, which still operate more easily with Internet Explorer (although that should change soon), but for the most part, the browser you choose doesn’t make much of a difference.

What does make a difference is that each browser should have a plugin or addon called Flash installed. This is a free addon to all the browsers which will prompt you to be installed when you visit a site with streaming video. If you’re not prompted by your web browser to install anything and you can watch streaming video on sites like YouTube without difficulty, Flash is probably already installed and functioning.

And that’s really all there is to it. Some great places to start are just the networks themselves (ABC, CBS, FOX, NBC, HBO, Comedy Central, etc.) plus Hulu, Netflix and YouTube. Just these sites alone could keep you entertained for years. Here are a few favorite links to get you started. My favorite is Netflix and it is well worth the couple bucks a month, but you can always just watch some free TV and movies for a while with the generous free trial:

Netflix Free Trial
Hulu.com
YouTube.com
nbc.com

So learn to watch television online and you will increase your television viewing options and greatly improve your flexibility.

Many of you may be familiar with the Starz movies channel on cable. Well, Vongo is a relatively new subsidiary of Starz Entertainment. Vongo enters the market with a somewhat unique approach: they aim to provide an all-you-can-view video buffet for a single $10 monthly fee. Sounds great, huh? Well, despites its ambitions it comes with limitations that bring it back in line with its competitors. Watch Free Movies Online will lay out these limitations for you in detail.

Update: Vongo has been closed since this review was published. StarzPlay is now its replacement. I will update the site with a new review of the StarzPlay service soon.

Vongo Review: Costs

As I mentioned, the basis of Vongo is their $10 a month fee. The problem with this is twofold: 1) The selections of movies and tv shows available is remarkably weak compared to MovieLink, Amazon Unbox, CinemaNow, Netflix and even the relatively selection-weak iTunes. 2) You can gain access to more… for a fee. While the additional content only costs $1 to $4 per use, this is in addition to the $10 monthly fee and the selection is still pretty sparse. I found myself most wanting to watch the paid content, so you can imagine how that seemingly small and simple $10 a month fee can quickly balloon as you accumulate the additional individual charges.

I should add that Vongo does allow rentals in many cases where other services only allowed purchases. Vongo also doesn’t require a set top for streaming to the television, although most users will need a Media Center Extender.

Currently Vongo doesn’t feature any kind of purchasing program. It’s strictly a subscribe and rent service.

How Vongo Works

To browse, rent and watch movies or television shows, you need to download and install Vongo’s proprietary client. The client is clean and simple, but it is nowhere near as robust as Microsoft’s Media Center, iTunes or even the Amazon Unbox Video Player. It fulfills its need well enough, but don’t expect to find a lot of useful data on videos you browse and don’t expect a robust search and find functionality.

Once again, with Vongo we have a video download service using Microsoft’s WMV compressed video format for its video files. And again they’re only served in standard defintion (640×480). These files can be used on three separate devices simultaneously. So you can watch your rented video on your PC, stream it to your TV using a Windows Media Center Extender, or play it on a PlaysForSure portable device.

Despite some disappointment with the Vongo client for browsing and downloading, the downloaded media integrates well for viewing with Media Center. Vongo provides an integrated interface for viewing Media Center content in living room environments, giving you easy navigation and control through a Media Center remote control. This manages to turn a potential weakness (the Vongo client) into a strength (the nice integration of Vongo with Media Center and Media Center remotes). Of course, you may not have a Media Center PC or extender, which makes this strength moot for many consumers.
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I can say that the compressed video appeared to be superior than some other services (like CinemaNow), but since Vongo uses the same resolution (480p) and video codec (WMV), most consumers won’t recognize the subtle quality differences.

Like most of its competitors (aside from CinemaNow & BitTorrent), Vongo does not allow DVD burning of its content.

How Do I Order My Videos On Vongo?

Since most of your viewing will involve the all-you-can-view portion of a Vongo subscription, selecting videos to view is simple. You use the simple Vongo client to browse and select your video, then start your download. In most cases you can begin viewing your video before it finishes downloading. I enjoyed how this removes the payment step for quicker instant gratification. I just wish there was more content to browse in the all-you-can-view area. If you wish to use the Pay-Per-View section, you can select these videos, agree to be charged for them and then proceed like any other service. I do hope they can move this content over to the all-you-can-view section, as it’s the only thing that makes Vongo competitive.

Vongo’s Library

Because of parent-company Starz Entertainment’s strong Hollywood ties, Vongo does feature some exclusive content, especially for content available to rent. However, on the whole, Vongo features just about the weakest library I’ve examined yet. If you want recent releases, you’re best bet is to go with Amazon Unbox or CinemaNow, as they provide far more of the recent top releases. If you want classics and television shows, Netflix is head and shoulders above Vongo. Vongo is particularly weak when it comes to television shows. It’s in last place for its TV selection of all the major services so far.

Where’s My HD Video?

I’m eager to write and publish my review on the services which offer HD content, because I feel like I’m starting to sound like broken record here. Vongo, like CinemaNow and Amazon Unbox (and most services, currently), does not offer any high definition content. All Vongo videos are standard definition videos compressed in the WMV format. Like I’ve said before, it is difficult to penalize them since most services don’t offer streamed or downloadable HD content just yet, but because some do, I must identify that Vongo is not one of them.

So What’s The Vongo Conclusion?

I love the core Vongo concept of a single, small subscription fee for unlimited videos. But the concept is compromised by making some of the content require additional individual payments and by having relatively little in the all-you-can-view library. Compare it to Netflix for example, and you find it hard to see how Vongo can compete. For just $9.99 a month, Netflix provides you unlimited streamed video from a library several times the size of Vongo’s library. And for that same single fee, Netflix includes its traditional (and still great) mailed DVD service, which gives you access to a movie and television show library far, far larger than any download or streaming video service library.

I’m eager to see if Vongo can grow while keeping the monthly subscription low. For now, I can’t recommend Vongo over Amazon Unbox, CinemaNow, or Netflix.

This concludes my Watch Movies Free Online review of the ambitious Vongo service. I hope you now better understand how it might fit into your media viewing plans.

Want to effortlessly watch any television series or any movie online right now without spending a single penny?!

In less than 10 minutes you can watch anything from the latest blockbusters like Pirates of the Caribbean, Spider-Man 3 or Ratatouille to classics like Singing in the Rain or Ben-Hur.

Maybe you prefer a television series?

In just minutes from right now you could enjoy streaming anything from the latest hits like The Office or the Emmy-winning 30 Rock to all-time favorites like Alfred Hitchcock Presents.

Perhaps you’re a child of the 80s and a little Miami Vice escapism appeals to you. Or perhaps you want to indulge in some classic nostalgia with Dragnet or Leave It to Beaver. Guess what? You can!

It’s all there:

Netflix Unlimited Streaming Video Plus DVD Rentals – Try For FREE

There is no better home video instant gratification on the Internet than the Netflix Free Trial. Some of you may think in terms of those DVDs you get in the mail.

Wrong.

Netflix now provides the most robust and comprehensive Watch Instantly online streaming service on the planet.
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Within moments of signing up, and without spending a dime, you’ll have instant access to thousands of movies, from current blockbusters to old classics to obscure indie films.

Additionally, you’ll be able to watch a remarkable collection of television series, whether you want to catch up on the latest hit comedies or indulge in a little nostalgia.

And by nostalgia, it doesn’t matter if your childhood was in the nineties or the fifties, you’ll find a favorite ready to stream right away:

Netflix Unlimited Streaming Video Plus DVD Rentals – Try For FREE

How quick n’ easy is it?

You can literally start watching your favorite movie or television within 10 minutes from the time you read this sentence.

I’m not exaggerating.

This literally costs you nothing and you can find out it if you’ll feel it is worth your time literally within minutes, so go check it out:

Netflix Unlimited Streaming Video Plus DVD Rentals – Try For FREE

And again, you don’t have to spend a dime. Plus it’s all perfectly legitimate & legal, so you don’t have to play any questionable games with questionable websites.

It takes just moments to create your account and start browsing their huge selection of streaming movies and television shows — so why hesitate? Enjoy all your favorites now:

Netflix Unlimited Streaming Video Plus DVD Rentals – Try For FREE

This section of Watch Free Movies Online will address how to watch streaming video. I will explain how most sites in this area stream video free for you to watch and provide reviews of the best and most popular services.

It is important that you have some understanding how these sites work, because many of them simply serve videos hosted by other sites. This is okay, but understanding the difference between a site serving streaming video free from external sites and a site which hosts the movies on its own server will help you pick the right sites to spend more of your time.

I will provide you with many of the names of these streaming video services, but I’m afraid I won’t be linking directly to most of them. This is because many of them contain gobs of copyrighted material. My site isn’t designed for you to learn how to exploit copyrighted material. It is designed to help you find legal and legitimate ways to enjoy your movies and videos online.

No Need to Pirate to Watch Streaming Video

While some of you may still seek the instant gratification of copyright infringement, I can assure you that finding and enjoying this same material in a legitimate way will make it both easier and more lasting. Sites which exploit copyrighted material don’t last or the material is removed right when you want to enjoy it. Do it right and legal and you won’t have these problems. Additionally, you’ll find that more and more studios and publishers are making their material available through legal and accessible sites. In most cases you can either stream the movies or buy and download movies legally.

So you can watch free streaming videos even if you do it properly and legally. You’ll instead have dozens of legal, high quality sources of entertainment for your movie watching enjoyment anytime, anywhere.

I will show you how these sites work, keep you informed on how up-to-date and legit each streaming video site remains, and select sites which are secure for you to view. However, you’ll need to manually enter the site addresses in your browser. Don’t worry, I’ll make it easy for you to find them.

Some may think I’m being too straitlaced. But I also use many Google services to maintain my site, and I don’t want to jeopardize that by linking to sites which may or may not be infringing copyrights. Even if a site as a whole is legitimate, I don’t want to take the chance that it may occasionally have illegitimate content uploaded by its community of users. I want to help you watch streaming videos online but I don’t want to jeopardize the authority of my site.

Watch Free Movies On the Internet

Some of these services will be completely free, while others will have free areas and paid areas. I’ll note when I feel a streaming video site features pay services which might be worth your money. Some of these services will offer mostly TV shows and a whole lot of user-generated content, but many of them will also help you watch movies on the internet.

The rise of streaming video has empowered individuals to have more freedom and choice than ever before. I will review and compare the big names, such as YouTube and Veoh, as well as smaller sites flying under the radar yet providing great content. I will also discuss some of the latest and greatest services, such as Hulu, and Amazon. So please return soon!

As I develop my site, I hope you’ll return frequently to find a comprehensive reviews to help you watch streaming video free.

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While the focus of Watch Free Movies Online will continue to be watching movies free online, I would be remiss not to include some excellent, robust services which provide tons of quality movie downloads for a small monthly fee or very small per-use fee.

In this section I will review 9 different services. Some of them are strictly online video services while others require the purchase of some kind of set top box, not unlike the kind of set top box many use for digital cable services. All of them require an internet connection, and the higher the bandwidth, the better.

The first reviews are up. I’ve written very thorough and detailed reviews of Amazon Unbox, CinemaNow, Vongo and Netflix. I hope they help you better understand your options.

So you can see how the big guns compare to the little guys, I will review both major services such as Apple’s iTunes, Amazon Unbox and Microsoft’s Xbox Live Marketplace and I will review lesser known services such as Vongo and Vudu. I will even throw in a couple very small, independent services I’ve discovered, such as the ambitious but terribly disappointing Watch Direct.

I’m investing quite a bit of time and money in these internet movie download service reviews, so I can’t just make them instantly appear here. I want this to be substantial, useful information for as many people as possible. Keeping up with this can be a challenge as new players keep coming into this market and other ones disappear all the time, while the stronger ones continue to adjust their services to keep up with this changing and growing way to watch movies online.

In a separate section, I will discuss peer-to-peer networks (often referred to as p2p) and free methods to download movies legally. That will be a tricky discussion as those methods often expose you to copyrighted material, which often isn’t as clear & cut legal as we’d like to believe.

I hope you’ll bookmark my site and return soon as I roll out these reviews. I hope eventually I can help you download movies legally with confidence and satisfaction.

You might also consider services such as Hulu which through contracts with major publishers and networks are starting to provide full-length free television shows and movies without requiring any kind of subscription or payment.

It should be noted that when I began this site this page’s emphasis was to be downloading movies. However, more and more services are moving towards hosting these videos and movies on their servers and streaming them through website portals. For the end user, this isn’t all that different. Some argue that the compression required to stream high quality video over the internet results in poorer visual fidelity. However, the reduced costs of bandwidth for ISPs (internet service providers) and the evolution of streaming video and video compression has made the quality almost a non-issue for end users.