I remember when ‘Back to the Future’ came out. I don’t know exactly how old I was, but I must have been about 8. I was the only person at school who hadn’t seen it. I’d asked my Mum to take me to the cinema to see it in the way that only an 8 year old can (160 times a day, every day), but for reasons involving my younger brother, the potential suitability of the film and issues of fairness that I didn’t really understand or much care for at the time, she insisted that I should wait for it to be shown on TV (terrestrial TV that is, because I was also the only boy at school who didn’t have Sky TV). 

But what Mum didn’t seem to understand was that when I was 8 years old, the average time for a film to be shown on TV once it had been shown in the cinema was measured in years. When I was 8 years old, years seemed like a very long time indeed.

If only I was 8 now. If I was 8 years old now, I’d have just downloaded it from the Internet. 

Downloading films from the internet is something that I get asked about in my work at Homeplay on an almost daily basis. It’s clearly something that most people know you can do, but not so many people are clued up enough to know the ins and outs of how to do it. In this article I’ll be going through the various ways of achieving your digital movie nirvana at home.

I’ll skip briefly over the illegal way of downloading films from the Internet for 2 reasons:

1. It’s illegal and I’m certainly not in the business of advising people on how best to break the law. Particularly as movie studios are starting to prosecute copyright thieves with help from internet service providers.

2. Even if one were comfortable with the idea of stealing copyrighted material, downloading movies illegally is fraught with complex compatibility issues, poor audio/video quality and most scarily of all, computer viruses. Risk breaking the law in this way and there is a fair chance that you will inadvertently infect your computer with a nasty virus hidden within the film file you’ve downloaded that renders your computer almost useless or worse still, steals all of your bank details without you ever knowing.

Fortunately though, there are several ways that you can download films relatively inexpensively and completely legally. You’ll need 2 things – a playback device and an account with an online streaming content provider. I’ll start with the streaming content providers…

iTunes

My favourite as it’s easy to use, surprisingly good quality and has the familiar iTunes user interface which most of my clients are familiar with. Movies are priced from 99p - £4.49 to rent, depending on whether they are HD and how new they are. Many of the newest films are only available to buy at £9.99 for standard definition (SD) and £13.99 for HD, which is similar in price to a DVD or Blu-Ray. Once you’ve purchased a film on iTunes, you can watch it on any of your Apple devices (iPad, etc) that are associated with the same iTunes account. The only downside is that the library is not as extensive as your local HMV by any means, but it’s still the biggest around at the moment and growing all the time.

Love Film

Many of you will have heard of Love Film, who are best known for their postal DVD rental service. Well, they have now added a streaming feature to their service that lets you stream movies to your laptop, internet enabled TV or PS3. For £9.99 a month you get an ‘all-you-can-eat’ type package that allows unlimited movie streaming. However the size of the library is quite limited, although it is growing all the time. Once the choice of films builds up (likely to happen as they are owned by Amazon), this flat fee type system should  look like a much better value than iTunes, assuming you watch more than a couple of films a month. Although iTunes will no doubt adjust their pricing to stay competitive…

Blinkbox

Similar to iTunes and Love Film, but without any support for anything other than a laptop, which makes watching the movies a little ungainly.

Boxee

I’ve been messing around with Boxee since its first Alpha release in 2008. It’s a great piece of software that can run on a computer or a dedicated piece of hardware called a ‘Boxee Box’. The software grabs all kinds of internet TV content from all over the internet and makes it easy to navigate and watch. It will also enable you to listen to and watch any music and films that you have stored on your local network. It even links with various social media sites allowing you to see what your friends are watching and get recommendations from them. You can try it out for free at www.boxee.tv and soon you’ll be able to buy a Boxee Box in the UK (they are currently only available in the US) so that you can easily get Boxee working on your TV. I’m going to their UK launch party next month so will be sure to keep you posted.

iPlayer/4oD/ITVplayer

Terrestrial TV services that are available to watch on most of the devices listed below. Not really for streaming movies, but worth a mention and very popular. Don’t forget you still need a TV Licence to use them though!

Sky Anytime+

Requires a Sky+HD box and finally makes use of that network socket that has been on the back of the Sky+HD box since it was launched. Allows you access to a whole host of diffent movies and content as part of your Sky package. Does currently require you to also have Sky Broadband though at the moment, which is a shame. Hoping this will change soon...

UltraViolet

Not so much a service, but more of a standard that manufacturers and movie studios are trying to get off the ground. It’s a licencing format that will allow you to buy a licence to a piece of content and play it back on any device you like. It’s very new at the moment and is far from widely adopted, but is one to keep your eye on.

There are other services out there (‘Google TV’ exists in the US but not yet in the UK), but these are the most popular ones around. Now here is the hardware that you need to access them:

A Laptop/Desktop Computer

Without doubt the cost effective way to watch online content, assuming you have a computer of course! Unfortunately though, huddling around a laptop screen and listening though poor quality speakers makes it difficult to enjoy the movie experience, at best. At worst, you won’t be able to make out what’s going on at all. You can of course plug your laptop into your TV and surround sound system if you have one, but it’s a rather messy affair fraught with all sorts of wires and mess and a rather tricky control interface, even with a wireless mouse and keyboard. Best avoided if at all possible.

A Streaming Media Player to connect to your TV

These come in all kinds of shapes and sizes, the most popular and well known being the fantastic ‘Apple TV’ box. They are designed to plug into your TV and surround sound system and come with handy remote controls and an on-screen user interface. Can also come in the form of games consoles such as the PS3 and some of the most up to date internet connected Blu-Ray players too. Highly recommended for families and anyone who wants simplicity and good quality.

An Internet Connected TV

You may have noticed that more and more TVs are ‘Internet Enabled’ or similar. It’s a common and wholly understandable misconception that ‘Internet Enabled TVs’ will let you browse the full Internet on your TV – not all of them can, only some of the very latest models can. If you want to browse the internet on your TV, you’re best connecting a proper computer to it (a ‘Mac Mini’ is ideal for this).  What Internet Enabled TVs will do however, is let you access certain types of online content. What online content you can access depends on what deals the manufacturer has done with the various content providers, which can be limiting as not all makes of TV work with all the services. In my view, you’re better off getting a streaming media player that connects to the services that suit you best. Best for people who want a completely integrated system with minimal fuss but are prepared to put up with some limitations.

Boxee Box

Not yet available in the UK, but is being launched here next month. It enables you to use the excellent Boxee software on your TV without having to plug in a computer. It comes with a neat remote control with a full qwerty keyboard. And as you can see, it looks pretty funky too! Be aware thought that Boxee is still in ‘Beta’ at the moment and isn’t completely free from bugs and occasionally strange behaviour. One for the geeks, for the time being at least, but still very cool….

A Portable Player

There are many shapes and sizes of tablet computers, the most popular being the iPad, by some margin. Whilst these can be connected to TVs, there are better ways of viewing streaming content on your TV, like a streaming media player, as described above. Best kept for travelling.

Finally, if you have a large existing film collection and would like to get rid of the clutter of your DVD and Blu-Ray discs then there is a fantastic system designed to do just that. The Kaleidescape system  puts your whole DVD collection on your TV screen and makes organising and watching your entire film collection a breeze, whilst getting rid of piles of unwanted discs and cases.

If you’d like to talk about getting a hassle free, dream home entertainment system installed for you and your family, then call me at our Esher showroom on 01372 476 783 or email james@homeplay.tvThe author James Ratcliffe is a friend of LIVING WITHIN and Director of Homeplay Ltd, 87a High Street, Esher, Surrey, KT10 9QA. Telephone 01372 476783 or email – james@homeplay.tv