Leveraging their own file distribution protocol, BitTorrent has entered into what's becoming a very crowded movie download market.

What we found in an initial review of BitTorrent Entertainment Networks is a service that offers reasonable download speed and good pricing. While it has potential when the movie selection is fresher, with the current selection and DVD-only quality for mainstream selections, it leaves us wanting more.

Read more for our review. 

With XBox Live, Netflix, CinemaNow, MovieLink, Vongo, Amazon Unbox, iTunes, and Joost (did we miss any?) all delivering movie download services, plus a few more on the way, BitTorrent is cruising headfirst into a market jam sure to leave some dead by the side of the road.

Important Criteria

As written previously in reviews of the XBox Live, iTunes movie downloads and Amazon Unbox, we believe the following the are the key elements to a successful video download service:

Home Theater Video Download Must Haves

• Anamorphic DVD video quality: like watching an enhanced DVD on an HDTV connected with either a component video connection or DVI/HDMI (theatrical aspect ratio and progressive scan video)
• Audio that is 5.1 AC-3-compatible (Dolby Digital and possibly DTS)
• Videos can be stored on a network drive
• Videos can be stored on a data DVD or other removable media
• Videos can be played on more than one computer and on portable devices by moving the movies across a home network; all without having to re-download the video for each computer
• DRM (digital rights management copy protection) and player must not be too intrusive. While we all know it's there, it shouldn't smack us in the face.
• Rentals must allow unlimited plays over at least a 24-hour period
• Purchased videos can be burned on a video-formatted DVD (as opposed to data DVD) and are playable in a standard DVD player (with the right service and hardware device support, this could be a 'nice to have')

Home Theater Video Download Nice to Haves

• Video playback can begin before the full video is downloaded
• Videos can be pushed to another location (an example of this is buying a movie while at work and begin downloading at home immediately)
• Rentals can be played an unlimited number of times on multiple machines over a one-week period
• Playable on portable devices

Our Experience

The Service

BitTorrent Entertainment Network offers movies, TV shows, music and games. Our review focuses on movies and TV shows. BitTorrent offers movie rentals for $2.99 to $3.99 and TV show purchases for $1.99. Titles vary with content from 20th Century Fox, Comedy Central, Lionsgate, MTV, Paramount, Spike and Warner Bros. Currently, titles are mostly older with a few exceptions such as Superman Returns and The Omen. No really hot titles like The Departed, The Prestige, Babel, The Illusionist or other new releases.

Downloads

In our tests, we downloaded the DVD-quality movie The Matrix and the HD-quality extreme sports documentary Focused EP 101: New Zealand. In addition to P2P technology, BitTorrent is using their own servers to spike the speeds a bit, which is good. Because while we found that popular downloads like the Matrix can be fast, less popular downloads suffer a bit. However, even less popular content averaged download speeds of about 300Kbps, while we approached 1,000Kpbs for The Matrix. At that speed, The Matrix took under 25 minutes to download.

Standard BitTorrent Client

Alternative BitTorrent Clients Work - Transmission on a Mac

Video Quality

Mainstreams movies are currently near DVD-quality. At 720x304, The Matrix download did not have as many vertical lines as it would have if it were truly anamorphic – closer to 358 lines. However, it's reasonably close. While movies look similar at native sizes, our experience is that the BitTorrent movies contain more artifacts when stretched for a 1280x720 or higher HDTV than a DVD would. See the comparison below.

BitTorrent at DVD-quality at Native Size

Comparison - Anamorphic DVD at Native Size

BitTorrent at DVD-quality Stretched to HD 1280x720 – Lots of Pixelation

Comparison - Anamorphic DVD Stretched to HD 1280x720 – Far Less Pixelation

The HD title we downloaded was 1280x720 and looked pretty good. While it had some compression artifacts, it was generally no worse than most satellite or cable TV providers.

BitTorrent at HD-quality at Native 1280x720

Audio Quality

While not digital surround, the audio track was Dolby Prologic II surround encoded. Other than some content on the Xbox Live movie service, we have yet to see full AC-3 digital audio implemented well on any download service. When DVDs are the competition, we think AC-3 digital audio is a minimum.

DRM Copy Protection

The DRM implementation doesn't feel overly heavy – movies play back in Windows Media Player without additional software. There are limitations on the number of computers you can play a movie back on, but BitTorrent lets you easily (for a fee) add a computer when you want to play a movie on a different computer. It doesn't simply fail or require you to re-download, instead it gives you options inside Windows Media Player. Even so, the fact that BitTorrent movies only play on Windows machines remains a serious limitation. In general, we aren't fond of most DRM schemes, however, this implementation isn't the worst we've seen. Since we love a Mac Mini as a quiet home theater computer, running Windows under Apple's Bootcamp is a viable option. We found that while Parallels worked fine with DVD-quality movies, the Mini doesn't have enough horsepower to run HD movies using Parallels.

HD Selection

The selection of movies, while not unreasonable, has the glaring omission of no mainstream HD (1280x720 or 1920x1080) titles. In the review, we did purchase the extreme sports documentary Focus 101 - New Zealand (at 1280x720) and it looked pretty good (no serious artifacts), however, no such quality exists for mainstream movies.

Pros

• Fast download potential – popular titles download fast, although no faster than a properly run non-P2P service.
• Rental model for movies.
• Very flexible storage models – external drives, network drives, NAS, DVDs.
• While you can't watch rental movies on multiple computers within a time period, you can re-authorize the rental for the original fee without having to re-download the movie.
• Unlimited downloads and views on purchased TV shows.
• Purchased TV shows can be watched on two computers.
• Downloads work with any BitTorrent client on any platform.

Cons

• Movie and TV show selections aren't fresh enough.
• Windows only for purchased and rental content – playback on Mac or Linux must be through Windows XP virtual machines such as Parallels.
• Complete download is necessary before playback can begin.
• Can't play a movie on more than one computer during the rental period.
• Purchased movies can only be played on one computer – they are tied to one player.
• Currently no mainstream HD movie content.
• Less popular downloads have slow download speed.
• Currently no 5.1 AC-3 compatible audio.
• No support for portable devices – even those that support the Microsoft video DRM.
• Limited movie selection.
• While download client works reasonably well, we prefer µTorrent (recently purchased by BitTorrent) on Windows and Transmission on Mac OS X.

Overall, we're glad to see another entry into the movie download market. The more options available to us, the more likely we are to finally get some good competitive options with broad fresh selections, friendly DRM, and high quality at a reasonable price. BitTorrent doesn't yet exhibit all those qualities, but it is a potential player that we'll continue to watch.

If you can find a movie you want to watch, you have the bandwidth and a Windows computer and a screen you can watch movies on, you won't go wrong spending $2.99 or $3.99 for an instant-gratification movie rental.

BitTorrent Entertainment Network

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