There are two benefits of movie downloading that really stand out to me as making it worthwhile – the first of these is the fact that I can see any movie I want whenever I want to watch it. I don’t have to plan a time or visit a movie theater when I want to watch a movie anymore, I don’t have to get in my car and visit my local movie rental store, I simply switch on my computer or take out one of the DVD’s I’ve made. On top of the convenience this gives me, it also save me a lot of money each year – money I used to spend on rentals and movie tickets, has now gone towards my shiny new home theater system that sits proudly in the corner of my TV room.

Just before you rush to get your membership, there is an important piece of information that I must inform you about. You see the big movie studios are naturally unhappy that their new blockbuster is available to download online at exactly the same time it premiers in the movie theaters. They want to make as much money as possible from their investment, and at the moment it is impossible for them to police the Internet and collect the revenues they would be due. There are some people who will argue that there is nothing illegal about downloading movies, but they are wrong – if you want to download the latest movies available as soon as they hit the movie houses, you have to accept this fact and deal with it.

We can go back even further, and see how Captain Kirk, Spock, Scotty, Sulu, and Dr. Mccoy made great use of their iPhones to call home.  Oh wait a minute, I do believe they called them communicators back then.   They even had the flip kind that protected the LCD screen when call the Enterprise. You know how hostile those alien environments can be to electronics, so the flip style was a must have feature.  Plus it gave the actors to make that slick and cool flipping action before calling.  Kind of like a “quick draw” of the future.

While they don’t talk about it much in movies and television shows, bandwidth is really a big thing that plays a role behind the scenes in these stories.  While we think it’s cool to watch movies online without downloading anything,  just imagine how much bandwidth it must take to beam an entire person from orbit on the Enterprise down to some alien Terra-firma.  Forget about one person, how about an entire away team.  In the latest Star Trek, they even manage to pull of just such a stunt while the ship is moving at light speed.  No such thing as lag time there.

I must admit, I’ve been a big fan of watching movies on and TV shows on my computer for a few years ago.  I actually owned a high-def capable screen for my computer long before I bought one for my family room.  Seems kind of backwards I know, but that’s just the way these things are going.  Watching television and movies online and without commercial interruption is really the way things are going.  Even the big movie companies are finally moving in that direction.  They were resistant for a long time, but I do believe they’ve finally seen the light.  As my friends the Borg would say, “Resistance is futile”.