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.
Vongo 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.
Read Vongo Review
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 and CinemaNow as well as Netflix. I hope they help you better understand your options. I will also have a review of Vongo up very soon, with the rest to follow in the coming week.
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.
Read Download Movies Legally
So CinemaNow offers a direct competitor to services such as Amazon Unbox, MovieLink and Netflix’s streaming video service. The basics are the same as Amazon Unbox, MovieLink or iTunes: pay-per-view style rentals for tv shows or movies with the option to buy some movies for a little more. CinemaNow separates itself from other similar services with a wide range of ways to use the service (single rentals and purchases, burn-to-dvd purchases, or a subscription service), but I finished my testing feeling that none of these CinemaNow options matched up well against its competitors.
CinemaNow Review: Costs
CinemNow’s basic rental service is pretty typical of these kinds of services, averaging between $2 to $4 per rental. It’s basic purchase service is also similar to Amazon Unbox’s, offering movies from $9 to $20 for popular recent releases. I’d say this is the most reasonable of its offerings, but it is just a touch more expensive than the Amazon Unbox. I’m not sure many people will find $20 for a recent release a reasonable cost for a downloaded file lacking the cover and disc you get when you pay almost the same for a physical copy of the movie.
Read CinemaNow Review
