Movielink.com has been advertising hard in the Media Center Online Spotlight. I thought I’d give them a try.

And it would be a good test too - invite the parents over for dinner and a movie - see if they could tell any difference.

Movielink has been advertising Prarie Home Companion, a movie Heidi and I have been wanting to see for awhile. She loves the PHC and I love the Robert Altman. I think it will be even more interesting with his recent departure. It looked like a good rent.

Movielink was advertising it. I installed the software. For rent, the only option was Real Media. I’m pretty sure Real Media doesn’t stream to Media Center, but everything at their site reads that you can stream anything you get, so I decided to give it a try.

Of course, they have a special movie download engine. Hate those, but everyone has one, so I put up with it.

After download and installing, it wouldn’t open.

Got tech support on the line and they suggesting uninstalling and reinstalling.

Of course, uninstalling would kill all rental movies currently being downloaded - and according to the website, my rental was being downloaded.

The guy on chat tech support assured me that if it happened, he would restart the download for me. Nice idea, but … installing the software requires that you close the browser - and thus the support session.

Second install process wouldn’t let me run the software without downloading a movie. Didn’t want to get inline for support to find out that I couldn’t get it to open again. Downloaded a free piece and it didn’t open again.

Forget it.

Went to Amazon Unbox, found Scoop (Woody Allen), and in 1 CLICK it was downloading.

Flawless process and one of Woody’s better movies in the last few years.

The question now is, of course, when will Unbox rent Prarie Home Companion?

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