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Inexplicably, Cinemanow does not sell 1080p licenses for the body of their digital content. Maybe this will change at some point but at the moment, any title you purchase from their service is immediately outdated and frankly wasted on an HDTV. To the best of my knowledge, there is not a cloud service that up-converts to 1080P. What you see is what you get on these products. Even worse, they sell their content at similar levels to competitors whose digital licenses ARE 1080p. Standard Best Buy overpricing extends to their online cloud services as well. Ergo, I am already inclined to dislike Cinemanow.

The cloud service itself works quite well. This is presumably because Best Buy purchased Roxio Now’s respected technology. I currently own about 20 titles on Cinemanow, most of which were either free or virtually free using Best Buy gift cards. Accessing the library is completely painless and I have had very few issues in terms of streaming. This is obviously because the bandwidth required is much lower for SD titles. Off my head, I cannot think of an instance wherein streaming has been interrupted. So, Cinemascore receives high marks in terms of account/file access and service provision.

Cinemanow does have further issues, though. I presume that the body of my American readers has shopped at Best Buy at some point in your lives. You understand the overhead that one experiences in dealing with a corporate entity wholly comprised of mismanaged stores. If you have ever had to return anything there, you know what an infuriating process it can be. Their online video delivery service is no different.

To wit, I have been incorrectly charged for “free” purchases before. Trying to get a refund for Cinemanow’s mistake was comically difficult and the communication with their customer service reps bordered on being like that Star Trek episode where Picard has to learn to speak in metaphors. I quickly grew to hate Cinemanow due to their terrible customer service, lack of HD titles and overpriced SD releases. I eventually ruled them out as a purchasing option, even when the titles are free. That’s a telling indictment of how disorganized Cinemanow is at the moment.

Apple’s service represents more of the same for me. Yes, I know that some of you will defend Steve Jobs’ honor in a duel if it comes to that. I am someone who loves the Apple iPad, the iPhone and the iPod but I cannot stand MacBooks. Single click is the devil and the keyboard buttons are far too compact for my fingers, which are the appropriate size for a 6’4” man. Apple appeals to the tiny fingers crowd of artists, one of whom happens to be my 5’2” wife. We have a deal that she doesn’t touch my laptops/desktops and I don’t touch her MacBook. The point here is that I enjoy Apple products enough to stomach their standard overpricing but I am not a fervent disciple of the brand.

Keeping this in mind, my experience with iTunes movie titles is much less positive than with the music store. And I should note that I eventually dropped the iTunes music store in favor of Amazon’s vastly superior service. You can safely guess my opinion of the iTunes movie cloud experience thus far.

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