Well, that was a waste of time

This is another story about my further experiments in digitalizing my TV experience.

Today's story is about my 3-hour (14-day) free trial of Vongo. Conceptually, my television/computer setup is perfect for getting direct downloads of movies to watch. Netflix has generally been good to me, but there are times when the lag between shipments or the occasional scratched DvD means that I'm paying a higher average cost for my DvD's. The idea of a flat-fee digital download system is appealing.

I read a lot of reviews of the different services. Even though most of the Vongo reviews were unflattering, (to say the least) it's fee structure and general concept seemed to work best for me.
Well, my experience was such a resounding failure, I thought I would share.

Strike 1 - There is no way to preview their movie selection without downloading their software.

Strike 2 - Right after downloading and setting up the service on my entertainment PC, I rebooted. Now the box will not boot back up except in SafeMode. Since the only thing I did on the machine was load Windows Media Player 11 (must have to run Vongo) and install Vongo, I'd call this a bad sign. Thankfully, Safe Mode w/ Networking is functioning. After recovering the few files that weren't part of last month's backup, I'll be re-imaging the drive.

Foul Ball - Since the clock is ticking on the trial period, I decided to cross my fingers and load Vongo on my new Vista machine. It loaded fine and I was browsing their selection in a matter of minutes. The interface & browsing functions are the worst shit I've seen in ages. The selection is everything I've read, i.e., worse than the DvD collection at your local library branch.* And big selection? Where? I saw all the screens and saw maybe a few hundred titles. I tried their "search" function. I tried over a dozen titles spanning my lifetime without a single hit.

Strike 3 - But what the hell, let me download a movie I've never seen. I randomly picked a SciFi movie called "the Covenant." Well, it "flew" through 40-50% of the download (in about 20 minutes) before suddenly and inexplicably canceling the process with a completely unhelpful error. There's no "partial" download. The file was completely gone from the list and my new attempt had to start from scratch.

I canceled on the spot and uninstalled the crap from my machine. I never saw the actual video quality, but by that point it could have been HD and I wouldn't have given a rats ass.

Game Over!

* Note: My mother-in-law is the President of her local library board. Her town library has a wonderful DvD collection. Heck, I wish I lived near "the Queen" so I could watch movies with her.