OT: Consumer Alert

[Atrocities]

A good friend of mine, or so I thought, recommended that I try this Vongo.com free movie download service offered by Stars. I checked out what they had to offer and decided hey way not?. Unfortunetly they don't disclose the truth until after you have signed up.

They only have 1800 movies and 75% of those are PPV only. The rest of the "free" downloadable movies are old movies that no one would be interested in watching. And to top it off, if you have Stars already via satellite or cable, you can watch those very same movies on their channel. Oh what a bargin this was.

Out of 1800 movies they have NO new releases, NO movies of valuable intrest, and NO reason to sign up. They don't tell you that a movie is PPV until after you start the download process and by then its too late.

They claim you can watch the movie was its being downloaded, unfortunetly if that is true I haven't been able to do it yet. I download speed is rated to 5 megs a minute, yet the best speed I can get from their server is 117k a second. (Good by any means, but not that good.)

I guess the main thing is that they don't tell you that of the free movies they have, none are really worth watching. Its like browsing a video store ran by people who buy their movies at yard sales and bargin bins. Hell I have over a third of the movies they offer for free or PPV already on DVD.

Here is an example of a good PPV movie - the 5th Element. Yup, you can rent the 5th Element and watch it until its license runs out which isn't for a month or two. Well crap, that sucks because I already have the 5th element on DVD.

They don't have any movies worth renting. They are ALL old mvoies like Red Dawn, Nixon, etc from the 70's, 80's, and early 90's. The movies that they do have that are interesting are ALL Pay Per View. And that isn't even a very good selection. As I said, none of the movies they have are worth a crap.

They offer a "free" 14 day period but since you cannot really tell if your renting a free movie or a PPV movie its not really free.

Right now this service isn't worth the $10.00 a month that it costs. 90% of the movies are movies that you have already seen, or don't or didn't want to see.

Save your money or use it on NetFlix. You might have to wait for your movie, but at least it will be a movie you want to watch.