Smooth burning

We review CinemaNow’s download-and-burn service

By Samantha Clark -- Video Business, 7/20/2006

JULY 20 | Done right, download-to-burn could catch on quickly.

With CinemaNow’s introduction of the service on July 19, we had to give it try, and overall, the experience was quite satisfactory.

CinemaNow’s setup is very simple, so even the least savvy tech user can do it. Go to CinemaNow.com’s download-to-burn section (it’s the first thing a user sees at the moment), choose a movie (we picked Resident Evil: Apocalypse as it was one of the few offerings we hadn’t seen) and click “Buy.” For the first download, the system will install its burning software, which takes about two minutes, then you fill in a brief registration form with payment details and you’re off to the races.

Here’s the main downfall—our download and burn took about 5½ hours! Sure you can do other things on the computer while you wait—we ate dinner and watched TV with the occasional monitoring—but that’s still a long time.

Once the download and burn was complete, however, we were pleasantly surprised to see the disc worked beautifully in our set-top player. Previews (of course), interactive menu, movie in widescreen and fullscreen, three commentary tracks—it didn’t hiccup once.

The audio and video quality is not bad. It’s not DVD quality and the picture has softer edges, but we were impressed. We were watching it on a 36-inch TV, but the softness might not be as noticeable on a smaller screen.

CinemaNow does offer printable jewel box covers and DVD labels with the movie box art, but they weren’t available for our choice. They were available for Backdraft, among others, and the design was a small copy of the regular DVD box art inside a film pattern.

Sony’s Apocalypse was priced at $9.99 (others including Backdraft, Barbershop and Scent of a Woman are $14.99). In stores, this single-disc version is listed at $19.94 and selling for less than $15. Will consumers want to save $5 for slightly less quality but the convenience of not leaving the house? That remains to be seen.

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