February 25, 2008 by sharky
A review of Movie ‘Streaming’ Websites, and why it works.
Very few ‘free’ online movie sites actually host the movies themselves - it requires an enormous amount of bandwidth, not to mention the legalities associated with hosting copyrighted content. The solution? They use inadvertent carriers such as youtube, megavideo, stage6, video.google, veoh.com etc. - all of which offer a staggering amount of video - but frown upon any copyrighted content submitted by their users. Uploaded content is heavily moderated - and promptly deleted - if and when something is found to be in direct violation of the sites’ policies on copyright infringement. Well, piracy is a wonderful weed - give it just a crack of sunlight and an iota of soil, and it will happily flourish. Movie piracy has found an opportunistic niche within the folds of the youtubes - almost the same way that pirates have inundated the 1-click file hosting sites with illegal content, as in the case of rapidshare and megaupload.com. The exact same ideology bodes true for youtube - copyrighted content gets uploaded; it becomes discovered and gets deleted; someone else re-uploads it under a different filename. It’s an infinite cat-and-mouse game in a world where there’s too many mice and not enough felines.
What we’re trying to drive home is this: you’ll not find many movies by doing any searching from within streaming video sites like youtube, veoh and megavideo.com. Content that obvious is a sure-fire candidate for immediate deletion. Take, for example, the newly released movie “Step Up 2 - The Streets” - found everywhere as a CAM release on P2P, but you can’t find it on video.google.com. That is, you can’t find it by searching video google (all you’ll find are 2- minute clips & trailers), but it IS there 
That’s where an intermediary 3rd party website comes in: they provide the proper links and search tools to find the movies. Many also have a hand in the uploading of the films, themselves - and thus they are able to provide viable links, since it was them that put it on youtube in the first place. And since it’s normal protocol to post it under an alias, pseudonym or anonymous link - this makes it that much more difficult for youtube et al. to ‘find’ it. Without further ado, here’s the best of the best:
The Best Movie Streaming sites on the ‘Net
You’ll require nothing more than a couple of codecs and browser plugins. Oh yeah, and a zippy broadband Internet connection. So what drives these sites to become successful? Mad advertising dollars through proper monetization - just check out those Alexa traffic ranks!
www.thepiratecity.org
This one’s a brand-new entry to the list - just opened publicly on Oct. 1/08. The Pirate City has some amazing features to go along with their 800+ movie listings. See our full review here.
www.watch-movies.netALEXA RANK — 769
Very fast site. We like this one because it loads a desired movie on its’ own page - with multiple available sources. If one link doesn’t work, just try a different one.
http://joox.netALEXA RANK — 915
Another excellent streaming site. Joox offers movies that are hosted on www.stage6.com (a premier video site) so the playback quality is fantastic! Apparently Stage6 is shutting down on Feb. 28/08, so it’s unclear what impact this will have on Joox.
http://quicksilverscreen.comALEXA RANK — 1,399
We also recommend using the quicksilver forums to find the latest movie links.
www.movieforumz.comALEXA RANK — 1,635
Excellent site for user-submitted content. Offers a plethora of categories for perusal.
http://movie6.net/ALEXA RANK — 1,717
Great site for new content!
www.free-tv-video-online.infoALEXA RANK — 1,852
Not a bad site - they also offer multiple sources for many of their movies.
www.sidereel.comALEXA RANK — 1,892
Nice modern TV & Movie site! We recommend that you check out the links on the right and see what the moderators and top posters / link updaters are posting.
http://stagevu.comALEXA RANK — 2,371
StageVu.com has really hit its stride since November 2008, and offers an abundance of trailers & full-length movies - as well as categories for sports, TV and others. StageVu is becoming the “content-provider of choice” for many newer streaming sites that don’t host their own content.
http://66stage.comALEXA RANK — 3,018
Very fast site. No popups, no external links. Stick with the movies that are listed on the right side for best results. Users can also download the movies as *.divx files.
www.movies-on-demand.tvALEXA RANK — 6,256
Well laid-out site with lots of working links.
http://wuapi.comALEXA RANK — 6,498
Wuapi requires registration (which is free) before users can view most of the content. Video quality is great!
www.tv-links.ccALEXA RANK — 6,684
Another well laid-out site with lots of working links, including television shows.
www.movierumor.comALEXA RANK — 8,445
Great site with lots of alternative links in case the primary ones are dead. Only offers recent movies in most formats (CAM, TS, DVDRiP).
http://beta.vreel.netALEXA RANK — 9,471
VReel is a video sharing site that allows users to upload, share and view high quality videos by use of a proprietary video codec (DivX). The site is currently in open beta in an effort to replace the now defunct Stage6 site with a viable alternative.
http://moviefather.comALEXA RANK — 11,737
Not too sure about this one - it comes with that dreaded Zango adware/spyware.
http://www.hulu.comALEXA RANK — 548
A great site for both TV episodes and movies! Be advised that Hulu only works from inside the U.S. - so you’ll need a U.S. IP address. A workaround for this is to get a VPN provider that has servers hosted in the States.
http://streamingfilms.nl
New online video streaming site that offers full-length movies (mostly from StageVu.com) - currently lists nearly 100 flicks.
www.play4film.com
Here’s another new movie service that provides legal free streaming of full length movies. Hi-Res downloads are also available, at a small fee for each.
— A much more robust list of online streaming movie and television websites can be found at www.ovguide.com.
— Brainz.org has written a great article - How to Download & Watch Free Movies/Videos Online.
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