Not too long ago things were looking gloomy for paid music downloads: tracks were crippled with DRM, prices were higher than on physical albums, listening required proprietary players. All in all, the user experience was quite abysmal. Today, with DRM-free downloads from iTunes and EU friendly subscription services like Spotify, it looks like a whole new landscape, inviting the consumers to come and revisit the concept of legal music services.
You could easily be lead to believe that this evolution would have touched the whole entertainment industry. I made this mistake on a lazy sunday morning, when walking to the video rental store was just not a realistic option. CDON.com has been sending me frequent emails about their movie download services, so I decided to give it a shot and chose one of their current offers: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button for just €1. The store offers both a web player as well as a download option. After clicking on the web player it became obvious that CDON forgot to mention one thing: Internet Explorer only. Oh well, copy the URL in Firefox, fire up IE8 and try again. Ok, this time I got as far as viewing the CDON promotional intro clip. However, no movie after that, just the same ad again and again.
