the idea of being able to stream movies and television over high speed broadband connections is wonderful, especially when there’s so many sources to access it from. now you buy streams for single episodes, complete television seasons and moves from hulu, itunes, amazon and netflix’s online servics among many other sites that provide similar service. now i’m sure you could just download it from a newsgroup if you really wanted, but people that play it legit pay to watch, because there’s always those pesky copyrights to worry about, breaking laws, ridiculous lawsuits and blah bloopity blah blaaaaaaah. but the problem is that you always have to wait – up to 28 days because movie studios impose limits on these services. so you can’t rent a new dvd until it’s been on the shelves for sale for a while. weakness, i know. but one new site is trying to fill that 28-day gap, and says that they’ve found a way to be able to do it, for as low as $0.99 per rental, without the imposed wait period, and wait for it…
otherwise, what you’re watching works like a regular dvd with player controls, even subtitles in multiple languages if you want them. you can take a break and watch it later for a period of 2 weeks. even if your wifi signal is low and you don’t have full connection, zediva will automatically adjust bitrate for the stream to make sure you’re not getting hiccups in playback. they’re kicking off with about 100 titles, but there is still that one downside of operating like an old brick-and-mortar rental business – there’s the possibility that the movie you want to rent will be temporarily sold out.
so sure, they may be doing it because they think a 28 day wait is ridiculous, but their attitude is that they want hollywood to see them as a customer, not a lawsuit target.
check them out at www.zediva.com for more details.