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http://www.insanely-great.com/news.php?id=1249
BlockBuster Movies On-Line: But Not For Mac
By Remy Davison, Insanely Great Mac
November 11th 2002
QuickTime, Mac OS not invited to the movies.
You can watch and buy Harry Potter or Ocean's 11 on MovieLink now, according to the
San Francisco Chronicle. 175 movies are on offer from MovieLink.
Unless you're on a Mac.
Major Hollywood studios have formed MovieLink LLC, which provides movies for hire on
line. Users can $3-$5 for a day's 'rental' and watch the movie on the web.
But not on a Mac.
While MovieLink uses both Real's RealPlayer and Microsoft's Windows Media Player (both
of which are available for Mac), the current version of MovieLink does not offer
QuickTime viewing, or support for the Mac OS.
A quick click over to the Movielink site also brought this greeting:
"Thank you for your interest in Movielink. We want you to take part in the powerful
Internet movie rental experience that Movielink delivers, but it is presently
unavailable to users outside of the United States."
According to the article, Movielink is the studios' answer to movie piracy, where
movies are readily available online for download. Movielink hopes to woo consumers
using higher-quality video and sound than available in compressed, pirated movies,
which typically use MPEG-1 or WMP, both of which are comparable to VHS quality.
Viewers will need high-speed internet access, however.
Analysis: It's unclear whether Mac OS and/or QuickTime support will be offered
sometime in the future, but it's clear MovieLink's investors see this as an on-line
'experiment' for now, with no time or inclination to expend effort on Mac
compatibility on what might be, ultimately, a huge flop. It's ironic, given how
ubiquitous the Mac is in Hollywood. Although I can't work out why you'd want to 'rent'
a movie on line instead of renting the DVD. The only way I can think this might become
popular is if they deliver rare/classic 'movies on demand', so you can watch that film
you can never find at the video store.
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