We’re a wired culture with the ability to satisfy and curiosity, question, or whim at a moment’s notice. Many times multitasking has the inclusion of background music, taking time to social network, or watching your favorite movie while you work. You don’t have to go to the video store anymore to get what you want and even the expense of pay per view is a thing of the past. The internet has democratized what we can do with entertainment and the prices are lower than ever.

The leader in on demand movies is NetFlix which started as a subscription service that would send movies directly to your home. As time has gone on, they’ve recently expanded into instant movie streaming either through your computer, a playstation game system, and in the future will extend to the Wii. Entertainment is a menu and you can choose what you want to eat and where.

Video on demand (VOD) can come to you either from a live stream through your cable box, recorded onto your digital video recorder (DVR) for later viewing, or your computer. There is no difference between your DVD and VOD as the controls are the same in terms of skipping forward, backward, slow motion, pausing, etc.

However, as with music file sharing, there are peer to peer network systems that can send large movie files through a bit torrent, basically offering any movie ever made for free. The dangers of this illegal file sharing is the risk of having adware or spyware downloading into your computer, putting your personal information at risk and slowing down the performance of your computer. Finding a legitimate movie downloads site is not difficult and should be used instead of the free sites because of the protection that they offer from viruses.

Some of the most well known movie download sites outside of NetFlix are Apple’s iTunes, Starz’s Vongo, Amazon’s Unbox, CinemaNow, and Movie link. The disadvantage to Apple’s iTunes outstrips it’s advantages which include only that you can watch your downloaded movies on one computer and your video ipod. Also, there are no rental fees, what you buy on iTunes is yours, it is like buying a movie and with prices ranging from 9.99 to 14.99 it’s better to go to the store and buy the DVDs you want.

The limited places that you can view your iTunes downloaded movies along with the fact that there are no free movies, makes iTunes a niche choice for niche market.

Vongo’s movies are from the Starz library and as such, current blockbusters are not available, but for 9.95 a month there are a large number of rent-only movies available.

Amazon, the book selling as well as everything under the sun behemoth, has branched out into the movie downloading business with great results. Any movie you download can be viewed in multiple machines and platforms, all coupled with extremely sharp image quality. Their menu of choices also include both TV and movies for prices topping out at 3.99.

CinemaNow is one of the best, if not the best, downloading service on the web for the ability to get over 4,000 movies in five different ways including: renting, buying, a subscription service, free, and most impressively the ability to burn the movies you watch onto a DVD. The ability to burn movies makes CinemaNow a cut about the rest.

The cheapest option with middling results is found with MovieFlix. With fair image quality and a lack of new movies, there is a mix of free and older movies at your disposal for under $8 a month. Bringing movies into your life in a way that you decide should have you using a legitimate movie download service that works for you.

Sometimes, you may have access to top rentals but not much else. Legal Movie Download This means that you’ll never be purchasing another movie machine for your evening’s entertainment at home. Tired of paying too much and not having enough time to watch the movies before you have to return them?