On-Demand market is heating up. After Netflix's UK plans, it is HMV's turn to enter the market. The company has launched its own
online video rental app for PC and Mac platforms. HMV is collaborating with all the major studios, hence, the movies collection is pretty decent and up to date. The UI for www.hmvondemand.com is pretty intuitive and lets you browse movies on the basis of different categories. The site also has Apple's Genius like feature and recommends movies on the basis of your past choices.
While HMV has a big history behind it, but it is essentially entering a very competitive arena. The on-demand services is currently being dominated by LoveFilm, which is currently bracing itself for the forthcoming competition from Netflix. The US based company is planning to enter the UK market soon. HMV is trying a few things to set itself apart from the competition. It is offering Online and Offline mode for movie viewing. If you are in a low-bandwidth area, you may decide to download the movie and watch it offline. Once you download the movie, you have 48 hours to watch it before it expires.
But the new program has some drawbacks as well. Currently it does not offer any support for streaming content to game consoles, so you are stuck watching movies on your computer. Though, if you are tech inclined, you can follow the instructions given in the manual for streaming to your TV. However, it still restricts your choices as most of the competing programs let you stream movies on a variety of devices.