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Blinkbox Review
- Movies to rent: £1.89
- Movies to buy: new releases average around £13; other titles vary
- UK only
- PC only
- Watch movie trailers for free
- Library of classic movies as well as the latest blockbusters
- Comprehensive search facility
- Hand picked movie categories
- Download movies to keep
- Handy 'similar movies' feature
- Post comments about movies you have watched
- Rent movies for 24 hours
- Free streaming TV episodes
- Interactive quizzes
- Integrated company blog
- Share movie clips via email or SMS
- Great looking web site
- Full screen high quality video
- Regular competitions
- Free download manager software
Blinkbox is a UK based movie download service combined with a social networking web site. The idea is nice, but we wonder if people really want to be tagging, sharing and 'twittering' as they watch their movie downloads.
To Blinkbox's credit they have a very attractively designed site that almost screams web 2.0 at you. There are lots of good looking and useful widgets for browsing the movies on offer or watching trailers from the latest cinema releases. When you select a movie a flash based player immediately opens up and plays a trailer of the movie to help you decide if you want to pay to watch the whole thing. From there you can decide whether to rent the movie or download it to keep.
The other aspect of the Blinkbox web site is the social networking functionality which allows users to leave comments, tag videos, create lists etc. The most novel feature here is the ability to create 'blinks', which the site describes as 'E-cards but good'. These are essentially 60 second clips you can make by editing together parts from lots of different movie clips Blinkbox offers. You can then email them to a friend for free, or send them via SMS for a small charge. These are a nice addition to the site, but we can't really see people using them very much.
The range of movies on offer at Blinkbox is pretty good as they have deals with many of the major Hollywood studios to secure the latest blockbusters. However, they also have a large selection of older and independent titles on offer which contains some hidden gems. The movie content all has to be paid for before you can watch it, but there is a decent selection of TV which can be streamed for free. Most of what's on offer might be described as British cult TV - along with some worldwide classics like Baywatch!
All the movies you download from Blinkbox are protected by the Windows Media DRM mechanism. With rental movies you have unlimited plays in the 24 hours after first starting the movie, while movies to keep may be played unlimited times. Blinkbox points out that the licences given to them by the movie studios prohibits any burning to DVD or transferring to portable devices. Movies can be watched as they are downloading if you have Windows Media Player installed and both rental and 'to buy' movies are encoded at 1500 kbps - which is just shy of DVD quality.
In terms of prices Blinkbox is fairly reasonable at around £3.19 to rent a new release and £13 and upwards to buy. Older movies prices vary depending on the title, but are all reasonably good value.
Blinkbox is a good looking movie download service with a decent range of titles on offer. It's only available in the UK at the moment so anyone else had better look elsewhere. We would like to see the ability to transfer movies to portable devices in the near future, but otherwise Blinkbox offers all the usual features. The social networking side of things is a nice extra, but not really that useful. However, if you are looking for a UK based download service Blinkbox should definitely be considered.
>> Visit Blinkbox.com
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