Vongo

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Vongo is a video on demand service, owned by Liberty Media's Starz Entertainment parent company of the Starz! network, that allows the user to download and view movies for a fixed price per month.

1 Service Provided
2 Technical Overview
3 Complaints
4 External links

[edit] Service Provided

Vongo requires a high-speed broadband connection, and is only available to users in the United States. The service claims to offer high quality video playback of over 1000 titles. Members pay a flat fee of $9.99 per month, and have access to unlimited downloads during the 30 day period. Many titles, including most recent releases, are considered Pay Per View; they incur a separate fee, and are only viewable for 24 hours. Users also have access to a streaming version of the Starz movie channel.

[edit] Technical Overview

Vongo uses Adobe/Macromedia Flash Software developed by Schematic.(Source: Flashback Flash Future section of Adobe webpage,10.25.06). Additionally, the service uses Microsoft's digital rights management, an encryption that regulates what devices files can be played on, or whether or not they can be burned to discs. The software is compatible with PCs running Windows 2000 or later. Movies can be transferred and played on up to 3 devices, but cannot be transferred to external drives or other storage media.

Currently, movies downloaded through Vongo are only viewable with the service's software. They are viewable within the confines of a certain time period; some movies are available for weeks, some for months. Once a movie expires, it is automatically deleted from the user's hard drive. The service claims an average download time of 30-40 minutes on a 90 minute movie.

Users of Linux are unable to view the Vongo web site, and get redirected to an "Incompatible OS" error site.

Vongo is not accessible to Macintosh users. The company says that the service will be available to these users in the future, but it is unknown when this will take place. The issue is that Vongo does not have access to Apple's version of Digital Rights Management. Support for the iPod video is rumored to be in the works, but can't be made available until support for the Macintosh is added.

Movies downloaded on Vongo can be transferred to portable devices, but only those that support Windows Media Center, such as devices by companies like LG Electronics Inc., Toshiba Corporation and iriver limited.

Despite only being available only in the United States, technical support is handled out of Canada. The company is notorious for keeping their tech support team uninformed about blackout periods such as routine maintenance, relying on them only for troubleshooting.^{[citation needed]}

A Vongo user can disconnect his or her service by calling (877)-866-4621.

[edit] Complaints

Numerous complaints have arose from the inability to uninstall vongo from computers. Additionally, many issues have arisen from DRM implementation, including movies not playing when they are completely downloaded, and still available for download from the service.