I said this once and I will say it again: 2007 is going to be the year of downloadable digital content! The XBOX LIVE Video Marketplace is thriving and iTunes is also doing very well. Movielink has been around for a while with lack luster success as their movie selection consists of many PPV titles leaving their subscription service with much to be desired.

Then along came Vongo in January of 2006. Shortly after they managed to ink a huge deal with Starz LLC, the cable and satellite movie broadcast company. The deal allows Vongo and Starz to distribute movies and specials via the internet in the form of downloadable content. Vongo has an “excellent” subscription model with unlimited movie download for 9.99 per month. That’s right, 9.99 per month. 9.99 per month (with 14 day free trial) gives you access to a large collection of movies (over 2500) that will continue to grow in the future and also allows you to access the content on up to 3 PC’s (PC and devices can be added and removed at will) and or portable devices. The only portable devices that are supported at the moment are devices running “Windows Media Center Portable Edition” but according to Vongo this will change in the future.

The Vongo software requires a Windows XP SP2 system (or Vista – as of today 01/30/2007). Setting up Vongo is very simple. You download the Vongo Setup which is 16 MB in size. Installation is painless and upon first launching the application you will be prompted to name the device (your computer) and create an account (Credit Card is necessary). After creating your account and logging into the service, you can begin your download craze. I immediately downloaded Ultraviolet, Detroit Rock City (I am a huge KISS fan), Underworld Evolution and Mean Guns (killer GUN movie with Ice-T and Christopher Lambert) which are around 1GB is size (widescreen format, except Mean Guns). All 4 titles have good image quality with very little noise. Vongo describes video playback quality as near DVD and I agree with this 100 percent. In fact I believe it is extremely close leaving you with a tough time telling the difference between Vongo title downloads and DVD title playback from DVD disk. The sound quality of the titles is decent. Currently only stereo audio is supported but support for other audio formats “may” become available in the future according to Vongo/Starz along with the possibility of HD digital downloadable content. Currently we must wait and see what the future brings (no Promises).




As I mentioned earlier, the service has Subscription content and PPV (Pay per View) content. The Majority of the content is available via the monthly Subscription price of 9.99 per month. A few new titles such as Ricky Bobby are listed as PPV (3.99 per title). Some of the titles are available for a limited time regardless of whether they are available via Subscription or PPV. For instance Underworld Evolution (Subscription) is available for download until 03/31/2007.

Browsing for titles (movies, music, etc) is fairly simple. Launch the Vongo Software, login and choose from the following categories: TOP PICKS, NEW THIS WEEK, MOVIES, PAY PER VIEW and MORE. Each category (except MOVIES and MORE) will then display a list of titles and or specials to choose from. The MOVIES and MORE categories will expand to show several genres. MOVIE genres include: Action, Comedy, Drama, Kids & Family, Romance, Sci-Fi & Horror and Starz Channel (more on Starz in a moment). MORE genres include: Anime, Music, Series, Shorts, Sports and Westerns. Each title is displayed with a thumbnail with the ability to preview or immediately start a download. Once you start a download the title is placed into your download Queue for immediate download. If you choose to download more than one title, they are downloaded one at a time (see image below). Nothing complicated, no hoops, just the ability to quickly download or preview a title at your leisure whether it is a movie like SIN CITY or music specials from artists such as Phil Collins, Ice-Cube and Alice Cooper. Access is easy and completely painless!




Another excellent feature offered by the Vongo download service is the ability to playback a title while downloading. The requirement to playback while downloading is 300 KB/sec. You will need a 3 Mbps (Megabit per Second) connection or faster (preferable) to watch while downloading. Many DSL connections are barely at 3 Mbps but most Cable connections exceed this bandwidth. I currently have a 10 Mbps Cable connection and a 3 Mbps DSL connection. Using my 10 Mbps connection is no problem but the 3 Mbps connection holds a little under 3 Mbps which means I cannot watch the title until the download completes. My 12 year old son was not happy about this when he was itching to watch Detroit Rock City (he and his mother are on the 3 Mbps DSL connection) but he managed to wait the 45 minutes without shriveling up and dying.

The ability to watch the Starz channel directly from the application (via streaming) is a feature I like very much. Allowing you to watch the Starz channel while working on the PC is NICE as the streaming quality of the video is excellent (I was very impressed) and in my opinion the quality is a tad bit better than the title downloads (Subscription or PPV). The ability to watch the Starz channel was unexpected but VERY welcome (A for extra credit).




The Vongo service has an excellent selection of titles (especially for 9.99 per month) that will only continue to get better. Without a doubt, Vongo is the best Digital Content Download Service for the PC and that is saying a lot considering that several companies have been at this for a while without making any significant impact on the market. With the exception of no 5.1 Audio or HD Content, Vongo is nearly perfect and will probably reach perfection sometime in the next year.

Vongo has already started the New Year off right with the addition of Vista and XBOX 360 support (as of today 01/30/2007). The XBOX 360 support is for viewing content already downloaded to your PC and the Vista support includes the ability to access Vongo from directly within Vista Media Center. I strongly recommend this service to anyone looking to download titles to systems in the home for playback on the PC or in the living room (via PC or XBOX 360). Had enough from me? Check out Vongo at Vongo.com - Choose Now. Watch Now..

Stay Tuned for a review of the Vista and XBOX 360 support…

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Editor - www.hidef.com

"True adaptability involves changing ones self to meet ones environment, not changing ones environment to meet ones needs" - Species8472

Does anyone have this on Vista yet? I have the app installed, worked great, however doesn't work at all in my Media Center application. It thinks it's "offline". I've tried everything I could think of such as removing any type of firewall or antivirus and restarting the program several times, enabling, disabling services, the tray icon, being connected to the original program first, not being connected to the original program, uninstalling, reinstalling, repairing, running random executables in the Vongo directory. I've found myself to become quite frustrated with whats going on. Just for fun I tried accessing it through my Xbox 360 extender, only to have it crash media center the first 2 times and show up as "offline" just as on my vista home premium system. I've called technical support twice. First rep, in a forgein country, was of no help and said I would be called back. Second was more helpful but couldn't give me any other advice other than to uninstall and reinstall the program (which I've done several times, trying various ways of installing, such as not running the program right away and rebooting first.) Every other application on my computer works fine, and this is the only one that is hanging up. Searching their FAQ on "offline" problems was a joke... Their solution to work around firewalls... Disable them. I just hope I get a resolution within these first 14 days, or goodbye Vongo!

Anyone have any suggestions or are having a similar problem and discovered a fix? I'd really like to be able to access movies like this through the Media Center Application on Windows Vista Home Premium. I'd prefer to stick with Vongo based on it's reasonable pricing structure. At least with Vongo, unlike movielink, you get a wide variety of movies for one flat fee a month, and its able to be used accross multiple computers.

Cheers.

I will have feedback for you in the next day or two. I am working on Vista review NOW (just getting started as I am finishing the 360 support for XP Media Center 2005).

L8

__________________
Editor - www.hidef.com

"True adaptability involves changing ones self to meet ones environment, not changing ones environment to meet ones needs" - Species8472

Alright thanks so much. I got an email response from Vongo today. They said I should contact Microsoft as it is a Microsoft Issue... haha...

Here's the email they sent me:

Thank you for contacting Vongo. I would be happy to assist you today.

I am sorry for the inconvenience that you have there. Regarding your Windows Media Center being offline, I would advise you to contact Microsoft for that because according to your comments here, Vongo is working fine on your computer. Even if we use Windows Media Center to playback movies, it is only Microsoft who can help you troubleshoot your issue.

If you have any more questions or concerns please do not hesitate to contact us again. We also offer phone support 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Thank you for getting in touch with Vongo and have a nice day.


Sincerely,

Anna.16571
reply@vongo.com
1-877-VONGO21


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Maybe they don't realize ohhh i don't know, that this is THEIR plugin that's causing the problem. Silly Vongo. I don't think they understand what is really happening here or what they're really trying to offer the Vista owning public out there.


Much intrest in your Vista review and how you get it to work. Good luck!


Thanks.

Try this: Close Vongo. Make sure you are logged out of Vongo by closing the Vongo ICON on the Windows Taskbar (right click and select EXIT).

L8

__________________
Editor - www.hidef.com

"True adaptability involves changing ones self to meet ones environment, not changing ones environment to meet ones needs" - Species8472

Ok, I've just tried that again, as well as trying to close the Vongo service that autostarts with the computer, with no luck either way. I'm about to try a clean install of vista once more. I'll let you know the outcome.

Well after a complete whipe down of my machine and installing vongo first after running windows updates on vista home premium i was able to get it to work after a few more "offline" messages in media center. it eventually, after 10 tries or so of doing God knows what, it ended up working, finally. The service actually runs pretty decently now, just what an ordeal to get it up and running! So remember, you're only prayer is to install Vongo first.

Cheers.

Good to hear.. I started with a clean install of Vista and installed Vongo shortly after which may explain why I did not have the same issue. Is it still unrealible, or will it connect every time you launch Media Center?

__________________
Editor - www.hidef.com

"True adaptability involves changing ones self to meet ones environment, not changing ones environment to meet ones needs" - Species8472

Hello all.... Glad i found this place and its Vongo thread....

i run Vista on my rig and i have to say, I love Vongo..... I mean, for $10.00 bucks a month, its unreal. Quality is just as good if not better than DVD's..Its really that good. Time too download a flick is like 12-20 minutes.

Streaming the movie to my Xbox 360 across the house is without fail.

Cant wait till 5.1 is released. I talked to a designer in another forum on this, and he said they are working on it..mid year he projected... Ill cross my fingers...

But even without it, the quality is excellent....

Hands down Vongo is a huge hit in my book.

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EDIT - I just re-read some of the posts above more clearly as i see some have had issues with Vongo.

i have helped allot with some similiar issues.

1) One of them was an issue with not being able to instal Vongo itself. Right off the bat you need the adobe flash plugin on your system. You also need it just to instal vongo itself, or you will get an error alerting you that it is needed. Now my client had flash on his system, yet it wasnt reconizing it. I wound up deleting all references of flash on the system, and reinstalled.All worked from that point.

This all appears to be a Vista issue, as the new V9 plugin for flash sometimes gets botched within Vista. The easiest solution to this, is to go to adobe.com and download there flash uninstaller program. Run it, then reinstal flash. This in all circumstances fixed the issues.

Being a MS partner, i have alerted them to this issue... And patches for this incompatabilty will come via Adobe themselves.

Anyways, i hope this information will prove to be helpfull if Vista users experience this situation. on there systems.