EZTakes DRM Free DVD Downloads
EzTakes is a movie store offering DRM free DVD downloads. You may watch and burn the downloaded DVD movies as often as you want without restrictions or additional payments. All downloads come as a VIDEO_TS folder that needs to be burned to DVD.
DVD Covers and prints will be downloaded automatically as well so that you can print them if you want.
Most other movie stores, like Amazon Unbox, restrict what you can do with the downloaded movie files so that you may not burn them to DVD or only watch them on a single device.
Movies are downloaded using a proprietary download manager which downloads and unlocks the movie after the download is finished. The movie is separated into different parts to get faster transfer rates and unlocking simply means that the parts are merged and that the VIDEO_TS folder is created.
You may burn the movie using the build in DVD burner or an external tool like Nero Burning Rom. You may select the viewer of your choice to view the DVD from within the download manager or simply point your DVD viewer to the Video_TS folder of the downloaded DVD.
Speaking about download rates. I first downloaded a free DVD movie from their site and it completed in less than 20 minutes. The average download speed was more than 8 Mbits. You can try and download the free movie as well to test your connection to their service and take a look at the download manager as well.
It is basically not only a download manager but also a program that lets you burn and move movies to different locations on your hard drive. It even comes equipped with a build in site browser. The download manager is clever enough to let you move files if you run out of hard drive space. I suggest to edit the download preferences to increase the speed to fastest and raise the number of threads from 3 to 5 for maximum speed.
My first movie that I purchased had an average transfer rate of 13.5 Mbit almost maxing my 16 Mbit connection. I did purchase several movies to find out about the service that regular customers would get and download rates were always around 13 Mbit.
The most important aspect of a movie store are of course the movies that are available for download. You will not find the latest blockbusters at EZTakes but a very good selection of cult and classic movies. Movies like The old man and the sea with Anthony Quinn, Oliver Twist or the Junglebook are well worth watching.
The majority of movies date a while back but you find the occasional movie from the last years. Supersize me would be one for instance. EZTakes has a strong selection of documentaries, lots about the DaVinci Code for instance and sports. You find Fitness, Wrestling and Martial Arts movies there. Just take a look at the movie index or select one of the categories from the left menu.
EZTakes is however not only about movies. It is also a way to express your opinion about DRM. If you purchase movies at sites that infest the movies with DRM you accept DRM. They see that customers buy the movies anyway and continue to provide movies with DRM that can't be played on all computers and standalone players.
If you download movies from EZTakes you clearly state that you do not like DRM and that you will only give your money to services that offer DRM free media files. I'm not saying that you should go to their website and download all the movies to support them but if you find some that are interesting enough you should prefer EZTakes over other services that use DRM.
Prices for movies vary a lot and I think that some movies are overpriced; They vary between $1.99 to $24.99. The majority of movies has a price tag of $9.99 or lower though and you find some pretty good ones for the bargain price of $1.99.
Update: EzTakes is no longer available.
Advertisement
Why not make use of the mplayer.conf?
Huh, I have never even seen this “font cache” pane; videos play at once for me, using VLC & XP SP3.
Mike, in theory this should have only been displayed once to you, at the very first video that you played with VLC. The time this window is displayed depends largely on the number of fonts in your font directory.
huh, I lucked out for a change?? Amazing!!
Apparently VLC keeps this info through version updates, but I didn’t see this message after a fresh OS install about 8 weeks ago, & a new VLC.
yes, yes, i have the same problem. sometimes, VLC crashes when it is playing .mov file.
Error:
Buidling font Cache pop-up
Solution:
Open VLC player.
On Menu Bar:
Tools
Preferences
(at bottom – left side)
Show settings — ALL
Open: Video
Click: Subtitles/OSD (This is now highlited, not opened)
Text rendering module – change this to “Dummy font renderer function”
Save
Exit
Re-open – done.
Progam will no longer look outside self for fonts
Source – WorthyTricks.co.cc
Great tip, thanks a lot Kishore.
@Kishore, I’ll try your tips, but does this mean it will no longer show subtitles either?
I do use subtitles, but the fontcache dialog box pops up (almost) everytime I play a file.
Could this be related to the fonts I have installed? Or if I add/remove fonts to my system?
I’ll try to do a fresh install also, if your tips does no work. I’ll post back here later…
/thanks
/j
@ Javier, The trick i posted will show up subtitles too. If not,
@ Javier, The trick i posted will show up subtitles too. If not,Dont worry, VLC is currently sorting out this issue and the next version will be out soon.
No probs @ Martin !! Its my pleasure
Try running LC with administrator privileges. That seemed to fix it for me
I am using SMplayer 0.8.6 (64-bit) (Portable Edition) on Windows 7 x64. Even with the -nofontconfig parameter in place SMplayer still scans the fonts. Also, I have enabled normal subtitles and it is still scanning fonts before playing a video. Also, it does this every time the player opens a video after a system restart (only the fist video played).
Does that mean that only instrumental versions of songs will be available for non-paying users?