July 11, 2006
Playing Movies on a Refurbished Laptop
In order to play movies you need a DVD drive and DVD software. Most laptops that have a DVD drive include special DVD software and somtimes special hardware to allow you to play movies. The movies take a fair amount of Hard Drive space, typically 1GB, so you need a 10 to 20GB+ hard drive. Your laptop needs to be at least a Pentium 3, 500 MHz.
These days most people either buy DVDs or rent them and bring them home. New services are starting to spring up to provide them on-line.
RealNetworks, best known for its media player, and Starz Encore Group, best known for the Starz and Encore cable service, have teamed up to offer unlimited downloads from a rotating library of 100 movies for $12.95 a month. RealNetworks, best known for its media player, and Starz Encore Group, best known for the Starz and Encore cable service, have teamed up to offer unlimited downloads from a rotating library of 100 movies for $12.95 a month.
You need three things to get started with Starz: a Windows 98 S/E, Windows 2000 or Windows XP; RealNetworks' free RealPlayer 10 software; and a high-speed Internet connection such as a cable modem or DSL line. A two-hour movie takes about an hour or so to download.
Other companies offering Pay-Per-View Movies are: CinemaNow (www.cinemanow.com) and MovieLink (www.movielink.com).
I'm not sure these services are worth it at the moment, but given more time, faster connection I suspect that this type of service is in our future.








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