Vongo (Beta) Video Download Service Review
By David Walker |
January 5th, 2006
Comments (5)
Starz Entertainment Group recently announced their latest foray into online video distribution called Vongo. Initially, when I saw this announcement, I disregarded it thinking that video content on a PC doesn’t make sense. When I saw, however, that the software provided support for up to 3 devices - including Portable Media Centers - I became intrigued at what Starz may be able to offer. So, I signed up and am here to bring you a first-look review at the service, including details on some of the movies I downloaded.
Setup and Installation (9 out of 10)
Vongo requires that you download and setup their Vongo player/account center. It’s a relatively small download, coming in at just under 13MB. Sadly, as of this Beta version of Vongo, you can only play the videos through the Vongo player (supposedly - more on that later). Installation was easy, although a free trial is not currently available, so have your credit card information ready!
Interface (7.5 out of 10)
Once you’re done, you are presented with the Vongo interface which is slick and pretty intuitive. You can select movies based on common categories (like Action, Comedy, etc…) or view the most popular downloads. You can preview all of the movies before selecting them for download. The interface tends to drag a little when many titles are viewed, but it’s not so poor as to be unusable.
One complaint I do have is in the customization. For one, you can’t tell Vongo where to save your files to. So, you can rule out using a NAS device, external hard drive - or for now - a secondary internal drive. I’m hoping they address this in the near future, as many users will have secondary drives that they’ll want to store the videos on, rather than on their C:\ drives. Also, from what I could tell, the interface is not skinnable or customizable at all. Not a big complaint, but if you’re not a fan of charcoal grey, you will be disappointed.
Downloading movies couldn’t get any easier. When you click on the title, you’re immediately shown a preview and a “Download” button. Once you decide to download, you’re presented with an incredibly useful toolbox that asks you to customize your download. Depending on the movie, you can select Standard vs. Widescreen, the language and even the device you’re planning on using it on (PC vs. Portable). There’s also a coupon code box, which I assume is for the Pay Per View movies, which I’ll cover shortly. You can choose to immediately download the movie or schedule it for later. The scheduling component is pretty simplistic, only letting you choose a timeframe of 1 hour increments, ie., 1-2pm, 2-3pm, etc….
Once you start downloading, you can view the status of your downloads, including whether the movie can be viewed yet. That’s right - you can begin viewing the movie even while it’s downloading. In this feature is where I found a trick and ultimately found out the more detailed information on the video files. The movie files were being downloaded to “C:\Program Files\Vongo\Content” on my computer. The file, whose name was a meaningless string of characters, had a “.wmv” extension. While it was downloading, I was able to open this file in Windows Media Player. Even more, it played without any problems! However, once the download finished, the .wmv extension was removed and the file would no longer play under Windows Media Player, even after adding back in the “.wmv” file extension. So, it would seem that a downloading file is playable in other players while a completed file can only be viewed through Vongo.
As for movie selection, there was an interesting variety of titles in each category. Most of the movies were somewhere between 1 to 2 years old, with some “classics” and newer movies included. “Herbie: Fully Loaded” was presented as one of their hot titles, which brings the tastes of Vongo’s administrators into question. Other videos, like concerts and extreme sports videos, were also available and added a nice twist to the selection.
Pay per view movies are $3.99 and are somewhat hard to differentiate from standard titles. The Jet Li movie, “Hero”, is a PPV movie, although it’s not clear why. Interestingly, the price isn’t listed until right before you download. Once you click on Download, you’re prompted on whether you want to pay the $3.99 or cancel. There’s also a notorious check box that lets you bypass the confirmation for PPV movies. By turning that confirmation off, you could end up escalating your bill without really being aware of it. You are now warned.
There doesn’t appear to be a limit on how many movies you can download, although, you can specify a maximum amount of disk space to use for movie downloads. Before downloading, you can see how large the video files will be, so you’re not in the dark as to how your hard disk space will be used.
The movies have expiration dates (presumably because of Starz contractual obligations) that vary depending on the movie. For instance, “Blade: Trinity” is set to expire (and auto-delete) on February 14th while “Hellboy” won’t expire until July 31st. You’ll want to keep an eye on this, so that you don’t forget to view a movie before it’s killed off your system.
Video Quality (6.5 out of 10)
Now, you may be wondering what kind of quality you’re going to get. Well, the answer is a resounding “eh.” Here are the details:
- 700kbps Video data rate in WMV format
- 64kbps Audio data rate in WMA 9 format, Constant bit-rate, 2-pass encoding
- Widescreen resolution of 680×368
- Standard resolution of 512×384
- Average size of about 500MB for a 1.5 hour movie
I was able to start viewing my movie downloads after only 3 or 4 minutes, which was pretty impressive. A complete download finished in less than 1/2 an hour in general.
The quality was a mixed bag. The resolution is almost DVD resolution (720×480) but the video and audio bit rates are kind of low (especially audio). On my Dell 20″ Widescreen monitor, the movie was definitely viewable, but was clearly not up to DVD standards. However, the resolution did seem to be about what you’d get from a standard television feed. So, if you’ll be watching this on a TV, then you may be happy with the output. On my 42″ HDTV, the resolution became very apparent as the graininess of the file was easy to see. Again - it was watchable, but not really enjoyable.
Final Thoughts
Since Vongo is still in beta, I’ll give them the benefit of a doubt on some of my complaints. I do want to see better customization options (selecting folders for download, for instance) and I’d like to see different quality downloads that balance bandwidth with quality. If I want to download a 1GB file because the resolution will be a full 720×480, then I should be allowed to. The movie selection was decent, but don’t expect this service to replace a DVD service like NetFlix just. I’m hoping we’ll see integration with Media Center 2005 or TiVo in the upcoming months. I think this will be critical to the success of the service. Since I don’t have a WMV DRM compliant PVP available, I can’t speak for that functionality.
All in all, Vongo has tremendous potential. If it can deliver through better customization, tweaking of download quality and integration with Media Center, then I’ll be hooked.
Verdict: 7.6 out of 10
January 8th, 2006 at 10:01 pm
Thank you for posting this comprehensive review! Having recently launced a competing site:
http://www.4flix.net
I was curious how Vongo worked exactly. By the way, our site addresses two of the biggest complaints I have heard about Vongo, namely DRM limitations and no Mac compatibility. Our files even run on the new video iPod. Feel free to check it out!
=Dave H.
http://www.4Flix.Net
January 11th, 2006 at 4:07 pm
I signed up with the understanding that I would receive 14 day free trial period (at that is what the Starz site says). Not did they charge my card the day I signed up, but now they keep telling me that they have no such offer.
I have even sent them a copy of the offer off of the Starz site.
Would complain to the BBB but I can’t find an address for Vongo. Anyone have one?
So if I were I wouldn’t my breath on the MAC thing, they don’t even know what their own companies web site says.
January 23rd, 2006 at 10:01 am
ChoiceStream to power personalized recommendations on Vongo — see press release.
August 4th, 2006 at 1:45 pm
I also signed up for Vongo and actually checked the box that said “free 14 day trial” and was charged instantly to my credit card. Not only that the service is unreachable today, I tried to login and it said I was not in the USA! im in Oregon, lmao. Who charges for beta anyway? even microsoft doesent charge for beta. Does not seem very profesional.
FS
August 22nd, 2006 at 10:13 am
Hello,
I am also really disappointed in vongo, I have not checked if they charged me instantly regardless of the first 2 weeks, promised to be free but as everything was going smoothly, one of my devices got an error everytime vongo tried to start.. it said “you are offline” therefore I couldnt download movies.. but how was I offline when I was browsing other websites with no problems whatsoever. I called them at least 4 times and I got responses from “Our technichians are working on it” to “Re-install vongo and it should work” to “I cant figure out what the problem might be” .. Im really disappointed, its really convinient for me to download movies rather than wait for them in the mail but with such service I might go back to netflix