After two failed attempts I was finally able to download a movie from Movielink and sucessfully play it at home on my TV. Some observations:
1. The site can be very slow. I tried to add a film to my shopping cart twice, but the browser hung and I bailed. If you are behind a firewall this most likely won’t work.
2. IE only – Mozilla Firebird is not an acceptable browser.
3. Make sure you have the necessary cables to connect your PC to your TV. I have an S Video out connection on my IBM laptop. I thought I had one at home, but had to make a trip to the store.
4. Set your monitor resolution to 640×480 pixels if you have a standard TV setup.
5. When you play the movie, the Movielink application launches to play the film. I was unable to get rid of the player controls at the bottom of the screen so I launched RealPlayer and viewed the film in Theater Mode.
6. Once you start playing the film, you have 24 hours to watch it. You can extend your playing time for a small fee.
I downloaded the film Osama a Golden Globe winning file that deals with the rule of the Taliban in Afghanistan and its affect on women. I would highly recommend it if you are interested in foreign subjects.
I also had Maven installed for a time. This application downloads short films in the background and then alerts you when a new film has been downloaded. The application manages rights to the films automatically removing films as they expire.
I would like to see an application like Maven that would manage the download of Bittorrent files, possibly via RSS feeds? To date I have not successfully downloaded a Bittorrent file – I think I need to tweak my network settings at home. Right now the download rate is painfully slow.