Tuesday, January 03, 2006

Starz Entertainment Group is introducing a $9.99-a-month subscription service that will allow people to download movies from the Internet and watch them on their computers, portable video players and television sets.

The new offering, called Vongo, comes at a time when movie studios and television networks are rapidly expanding their efforts to distribute their content over the Internet, experimenting with both paid and advertiser-supported models.

With Vongo, Starz will shift to technology from Microsoft that will allow movies to be downloaded and watched on portable video players using Microsoft's software.

Starz, which is offering a test version of the service at Vongo.com, has so far not been able to work out an arrangement for Vongo to run on iPods.

As a subscription service, Vongo will allow users to download as many movies as they want for $9.99 a month. They will be able to choose from an ever-changing roster of about 800 movies, including about 300 films in rotation on the Starz cable channel (mainly movies released in theaters one to three years earlier) and 500 older titles.