Internet Movies I love movies, but I'd rather eat stale popcorn than wait in line at Blockbuster. So I joined Movielink and Starz Ticket on Real Movies. Both let you download films from the Internet and watch them on your PC. CinemaNow has a similar service, but a fellow can watch only so many movies. My quest: to find out if they're a better deal than Netflix, my DVD-by-mail service of choice. Here's how they stack up. Selection: Browsing Starz's 150-odd movie titles is much like cable surfing at 3 a.m.--not surprising, since the films are also part of the Starz movie library. Who can forget Two of a Kind, starring John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John, or Smokey and the Bandit III? (Answer: everyone but Starz subscribers.) Movielink, in contrast, serves up 900 films, including recent Oscar winners like Cold Mountain. Netflix offers a whopping 25,000 DVD choices. Game over. Price: Starz's $13 a month for unlimited downloads may seem like a bargain, but what do you do once you've rented the five flicks worth watching? Movielink charges $1 to $5 per film--but mostly $5. That's about $4.99 more than I am willing to pay for movies like Bio-Dome. With Netflix, I can rent up to three DVDs at a time for $22 a month. We'll see 12 to 15 movies in a good month. It's a much smarter deal. Convenience: With Netflix, you add movies to your list, and the discs are sent to you as they become available. Movielink and Starz let you download movies to watch later (or alternatively, in Movielink's case, as they download; Starz expects to offer streaming). That's more convenient, right? But the services are hobbled by the studios, which give movies to them a month after they hit the video stores, and impose silly rules on when you can watch films. On Starz, for example, you can watch a movie at any time, provided you do it while the film is still available on the site and within 24 hours of starting it, but not more than three times, except during a blue moon in months that end in "r." (Okay, I made up that last bit.) Starz lets you burn films to disc, but you can only play that CD on up to three PCs. Movielink gives you 30 days to watch a movie, but you must finish it within 24 hours of starting it or pay $1 for another 24-hour license--no burning allowed. You can keep a Netflix DVD for weeks and watch it a hundred times. That would be stupid, but you could do it. Playback: To simulate a real movie-theater experience, I connected my notebook to a digital projector and watched Blue Crush (from Starz) on the wall of my living room. The picture was almost as good as with a DVD. But Movielink was a mess. One file that I downloaded was corrupted and wouldn't play. I had to reinstall Movielink's media software and download Bride of Chucky all over again. When the film did finally play, it stuttered and dropped frames. Netflix DVDs do have a high schmutz factor, and this can cause playback problems, but a quick wipe with Windex and a tissue usually fixes them. The verdict? Movie download sites are a good idea done poorly, at least so far. But when Netflix launches its own download service next year, in partnership with TiVo, I'll be one of the first in line to sign up. And I won't even have to get off the couch to do it.