By Margaret A. McGurk
Enquirer staff writer

Karl Dailey of Bellevue, sitting here in the comfort of his own home, has dabbled with on-demand service from his cable operator but likes going to theaters, too. Photo illustration by BRANDI STAFFORD/The Enquirer

Road-weary movie fans sick of trekking to the video store are discovering a new world of at-home shopping.

Electronic delivery and the spread of broadband Internet access have made it easy to rent a video without ever leaving home, thanks to digital cable services and Web-based movie stores that stock hundreds of on-demand feature films for relatively low cost.

The Pew Internet & American Life Project recently found that about 55 percent of all Americans who use the Internet have access to a broadband connection at home or work.

Those connections are key to the new technology; high speed is required for quality video and sound, as well as tolerable download times. A computer user with a high-capacity connection can download a feature film in 40 minutes, sometimes less. A low-speed phone connection - the kind on most home computers - can take several hours to complete the same download.

Avoid downloads

Download time is not an issue with on-demand digital movies offered by some cable companies. Usually, movies can be viewed as fast as they are piped through a set-top box to a TV screen.

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Rob Howard, director of public affairs for Time-Warner Cable in Cincinnati, said the company's iControl digital movie service offers savings for many regular video renters. The service charges $3 or $5 for most titles, and customers have 24 hours after ordering to watch the film as many times as they wish.

"In Cincinnati, late fees (paid to video shops) for one year were $8 million," he said. "People are paying overall way too much to watch their movies."

Privacy a big deal

Howard said privacy is as much of a motive as convenience for users. "No one needs to know what you're renting," he said. "So if you want to watch Coyote Ugly, that kind of stupid guilty-pleasure thing, you can do that."

Howard said about half the firm's 350,000 customers have the digital service that makes the on-demand rental possible, and that it recently tripled its movie-storage capacity.

(Traditional pay-per-view on non-digital systems requires customers to watch the films at times set by the cable company.)

As a bonus, cable and satellite customers with digital video recorders (called DV-Rs) connected to their cable service can save programs to watch later; coding embedded in the electronic file makes it impossible to copy, or to watch after a rental period expires.

Streaming is popular for movie-watching, said Howard, because "it's basically like having a library that we store. ... A DV-R gives you maybe 35 hours of content; we provide 2,400."

"These technologies exist to give consumers what they want," said Howard. "And what they want is convenience and control."

Many users report technical glitches dog the systems. "More often than not, when I try to start a movie, I get a response saying something like 'This service is not available at this time,' " said Betsy Urban of Hyde Park.

Howard said the system's newly expanded capacity will overcome some glitches; his advice when the system freezes up is to reboot it by pulling the plug for five minutes.

Selection an issue

Movie buffs are still a long way away from the vision of calling up any movie ever made in any language with the click of a button.

Karl Dailey of Bellevue has dabbled with digital on-demand service from his cable operator, Insight Communications. "I do not use it often, though, since I like to watch must-see movies in a theatre and the selection on Insight is very limited.... movies on demand hasn't really caught on with me yet."

Selection remains an issue. Two Santa Monica-based online services - Movielink, which is owned by several movie studios, and CinemaNow, an independent firm with licenses from studios - each offer about 900 films. In comparison, a large video store stocks thousands of titles.

Curt Marvis, head of CinemaNow, acknowledged the total number of titles available electronically must grow before digital delivery becomes standard.

"In the early cable days, HBO didn't have all the studio pictures... It took them a while to get the content, and digital distribution is in the same kind of gestation period."

The quality of movies downloaded to computers is not yet up to DVD standards, nor are most home computers equipped to display the best quality picture. Cable services, which are now selling high-definition shows, offer better quality, but are still tethered to physical wiring.

Lance Moody of Mason, who publishes DVD reviews on his Web log (lancemoody.typepad.com), said, "For folks who really have invested in the idea of home theater, the antiquated picture of the on-demand services is just not very attractive in the face of the overwhelming convenience and availability of DVDs."

Gregg Graff of Insight Communications, which serves much of Northern Kentucky, said new technology that gives users higher quality and more flexibility is on the way.

"I think you will see a lot more sharing within the home, with one main media server that will store the content that you want to watch," he said. "There will be much more networking within the home. So if I record a movie and I'm watching in the living room, I can move to the bedroom and resume watching it."

E-mail mmcgurk@enquirer.com