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Vongo is an online, on demand video download service. The thought of not having late fees, not having to leave the house, or for that matter leave the couch to rent a movie it quite enticing. So after seeing the a Vongo ad on TV, I decided to give them a try. They advertise for $9.99 access to over 1000 “Choose now, Watch now” movie tittles, with options for transferring to portable video players. You have to download (a windows) a client to use their service, and it integrates with Vista Media Center. If you have Media Center, Vongo will integrate into the Media Center UI with a plugin.
Selection
The selections were pretty decent, however this was no NetFlix or Blockbuster. The available selection seemed to be whatever was showing on the Stars Network (Vongo is owned by Stars) or rather what Stars had the rights to show. The majority of the available tittles were a couple of years old. And the new releases were not all that big. “Stranger than Fiction” , “Pursuit of Happiness” and “Meet the Robinsons” being the biggest tittles at the time of my trial.
There were some other tittles available as “Pay Per View” for $3.99, but I feel that you could use you cable providers PPV system to do the same and should not be included in the review. There are also other categories of titles such as Anime, Music (Recorded concerts and interviews).
Functionality
When you wanted to watch a movie depended heavily on when you started the download for that movie. Trying to download a movie at prime time (7:30 pm MST) the download time was just over 4 hours, not quite meeting the advertised “Watch now” expectation. The files are between 1 and 2 gig 720X480 DRM’d WMV’s, and can play natively in Windows Media Player. Vongo Supports up to 3 devices that you can have on your account, so if you have a long plane flight you can throw the files on your laptop and watch them on the go. Vongo also supports transferring movies to these players currently:
- Archos 405
- Archos 605Creative Zen
- Creative Zen Vision
- Toshiba Gigabeat V
- Toshiba Gigabeat s60
- Toshiba Gigabeat S30
Because the files are WMV’s you can also stream them to your XBox 360 and watch on the big screen if you don’t have an HTPC. The Media Center plug-in makes it the process a bit easier, and allows you to browse the library with the remote.
Overall Vongo is a good value for $9.99 a month especially if you are some one that spends a lot of time on the go. But for a person like me who enjoys spending time in my “Media Lair” I’ll be sticking with my Blockbuster online, with the HD rentals and In-store trades for $8 more a month.
Riyad’s Update: I have Netflix which offers the “What it Now” service for streaming movies in real-time from the Netflix site. When this service first launched it was awesome; had all the Triple-A titles, DVD quality and plenty to choose from. For the last 4 months or so, Netflix has pulled almost all big blockbusters from the site, anything new and all the TV shows. My guess is some sort of conflict with Hollywood made Netflix pull all the content, but without it the service is totally useless now.
Unless you are super-curious about all the new independent films from Croatia, Watch it Now is a lot like flipping through an in-room movie service from the early 90s and not relevant at all (Forget about catch up on The Office, South Park, Lost or any other show you’ve ever enjoyed watching).
I hope at some point Netflix redeems that service, but who knows.
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December 17th, 2007 at 10:51 am
“You have to download a client to use their service, and it integrates with Vista Media Center”
it was a nice concept till i read that…
with so little people adopting vista and most deleting it because of all that DRM crap which limits the customer.
People are going back to win XP or migrating to Linux and MAC.
another showstopper:
“The files are between 1 and 2 gig 720X480 DRM’d WMV’s, and can play natively in Windows Media Player.”
anyone can pirate these “flicks” now a days and download a DRM free version… yes Free. If u want something smaller, there are Dvix versions just 700mb with good quality.
i personally instead of pirating i go to my local movie store, rent a DVD and watch it in my “linux” media center on my living room. If i got a ps3 i wouldn’t be able to use the service either.
i don’t see any benefit of using vongo… even i were to use windows again i wouldn’t use this “limited” product. Much better than a windows only “communism type monopoly” sponsored by Redmond. A lot of better things out there in a world that’s already Free.
December 17th, 2007 at 11:52 am
Manny,
Is there no UPnP AV server app for Linux? The PS3 just follows that spec so any device or system that can stream media using that spec you can watch on the PS3.
For example my Linux NAS can use the Twonky Media software to host my media to my PS3, some folks use TVersity for Windows. But I’m not sure if there is free/open source UPnP AV stuff out there for linux…
December 17th, 2007 at 12:18 pm
@Riyad Kalla
umm i don’t know too much about UPnP AV, but i’ll check with some friends about it and hopefully get something u can use
December 17th, 2007 at 12:31 pm
virtually nothing is impossible under linux, but it might need some tweaking/manual configuration and stuff.
if you are willing to learn am sure i can get you some info to manually setup one up.
but if u need it quickly and don’t mind paying a few bucks for TwonkyMedia, then the 29.95 € isn’t so expensive.
anyhow i’ll try to get you something useful then you decide
December 17th, 2007 at 12:53 pm
hi, to get you started:
info on uPNP for ubuntu or linux in general
http://www.ubuntugeek.com/howto-install-freecom-musicpal-in-ubuntu-feisty.html
ps3 how-to:
http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/blogs/upnp_mediatomb_ps3_and_me
mediatomb
http://mediatomb.cc/
more mediatomb instructions:
http://xmilk.com/blogs/skgs_ramblings/archive/2007/10/16/test.aspx
———–
geekbox and ushare (upnp av)
http://www.geexbox.org/en/index.html
ushare instructions
http://ushare.geexbox.org/
————
oh and a distro like mythbuntu has support for this stuff and come most stuff pre-installedconfigured (but i haven’t tried it myself)
hope these help
December 17th, 2007 at 12:59 pm
oh, forgot.
if you go for the free alternative like mediatomb.
it would be great if you posted an article on the blog with your experience, fixes to issues along the way, difference between the commercial alternatives and free ones, etc.
and some pics too :p
December 17th, 2007 at 1:02 pm
I’m not sure about Riyad’s experience, but I’ve found plenty of hit movies and TV shows using Netflix’s watch now service. In fact just a few months ago, they had episodes of the Office and 30 Rock the day after they aired. I’m not sure if they are still there, but I know that because Netflix only purchases so many licenses, that the hit shows and movies don’t tend to stick around for very long. If I see a show that I’m interested in, I’ll try and watch Season 1 very quickly because the later seasons tend to last a bit longer.