So Paid Content turned me on to the fact that Sky is now offering customers the ability to download movies through the internet. Silicon.com's got a story with some more details over here. My first thought, as I commented on Paid Content, was so what? Anyone with a Sky Plus box already can do stuff like this and better, it seemed.

Let me explain how Sky works for those not familiar with it. It's digital satellite, similar to Direct TV (I gather -- I don't have Direct TV nor have ever seen it). Many, many people in the UK get Sky. The little dishes are everywhere.

Sky has its own TiVo like device called Sky Plus. It records what you want to a hard drive. I have one of the original ones with a 40MB drive that I upgraded a few months ago by myself, putting in a 160MB one.

Sky+ is awesome. It was one of those tech things that when I got it, my wife agreed it was so good that she told her friends to get it. That doesn't happen when I show her my PDA and try to get her going with that!

Want movies on demand with Sky? No problem. I can get pay per view films at any time, stuff not long out of the theaters and now doing the rounds on cable/sat/etc. It's like about $5 for a film.

Got regular Sky? You order the film through Sky Box Office and can watch it anytime up to 24 hours, I think. Haven't ordered that way for ages, since we have Sky Plus. With Sky+, you order the film, then you can leave it on your hard drive for at least a day, maybe longer. If you don't watch, you don't pay. If you watch, then you've got like 24 hours to pay.

Sky+ is especially cool because it effectively downloads your film instantaneously. If you want to watch, the entire film is right there as soon as you push the button. Need to fast forward? You can advance at up to 30 times speed through it. There's no long wait for it to come down.

Now skip paid movies. If you have Sky Plus, there's a very good chance you subscribe to one of the movie packages that gives you access to Sky Movies channels 1 through 9. These show a variety of movies throughout the day, all day. You've got stuff just coming off pay per view as well as older films.

I'm always recording films we've missed in the cinema because, well, we never seem to make it out anymore what with the kids and so on. So I record them to Sky+, then I archive them to DVD through my DVD recorder that's attached to my Sky box.

What about copy protection? What about it! I have never found I couldn't copy something to DVD that Sky's put out through Sky Movies, and I'm pretty sure that's the case with pay per view.

So bring it back home to Sky For Broadband. I wasn't wowed by the news. I mean, spend an hour (that's what's estimated according to the story above) downloading a movie that I could only watch on my PC and within a limited time frame? In contrast, if I catch the movie showing on Sky Movies, I've got it for as long as I want it -- fast, convenient and no copy protection to mess with. And it's not like I've got to wait around. Sky+ will record the movie for me at any time.

Enough of the remove speculation. How about actually trying it? OK, since I have Sky Movies, I'm able to access the service. I signed-up and downloaded the required software, which was fast.

Software installed, I was told I needed to get a DRM upgrade for Windows Media Player. Then I reran Sky, where it told me I had to be an administrator to install the update. I am -- but kind of scary sounding to the typical home user, don't you think?

After the install, it told me to get the upgrade again. Joy. OK, I did that. This time, I got in, with this login screen:

Next, I was greeted by this:

OK, I headed into the movies area and got this:

So how's Sky By Broadband compare to what I can do with Sky already? First I checked out whether any pay-per-view movies on Sky were also on the web service. Nope, but that didn't surprise me. Sky By Broadband didn't claim to be a pay-per-view service.

So let's compare to Sky Movies. What's on right now? On Sky Movies 1 through 9, I have currently showing:

1. The Man Who Knew Too Little
2. Girl With A Pearl Earring
3. Army Of Darkness
4. Multiplicity
5. Paycheck
6. The Shadow
7. Broken Lizard's Club Dread
8. SWAT
9. Something To Talk About

OK, so are these on download as well? Nope, only two of them are:

• Multiplicity
• SWAT

That tells me that Sky Movies through my TV has some films that Sky By Broadband does not. Does it work the opposite way? Does Sky By Broadband have films not on my Sky box?

To find out, I did a Movies A-Z listing on my Sky box. This shows all the programs showing within a set period of time -- exactly how long isn't clear, but it's seems to be a couple of days (I never use this option, so I don't know for certain -- but I can see programs listed that won't show until Friday, so it's covering at least up to two days ahead).

Next, I did the same on Sky By Broadband:

Some programs are the same. Both my box and the web version have Awakenings. But Sky By Broadband has Anaconda, while my Sky Box does not. As it happens, I know Sky was showing that a few days ago on Sky Movies, because I stumbled upon it by accident, causing my wife to exclaim, "Is that Jennifer Lopez?" Yes, she apparently does fight a giant snake in the movie. And if a movie was on Sky Movies a few days ago, chances are it will air again in the near future.

OK, let's do a download! Aside from A-Z listings, you can browse by subject. Some comedy? OK:

How about White Chicks? Well, at 893MB, I'll skip this program that I already recorded off my Sky box two weeks ago and burned to DVD for later viewing. Score a point against broadband.

Hmm -- something small. That means short, and kids films are generally short. Here we go - Jumanji:

A nice kids film at only 473MB. I hit download, then started doing some more browsing. About 10 minutes later, 411MB had been downloaded when I looked at the folder in Windows where files are kept. Incredible for me 2MB BT DSL connection. So why was it looking stalled at 32 percent in the Sky download queue? I'll come back to that, but let's press on.

Notice the download page above. It says when the movie it will next show on Sky Movies on regular TV. Heck, I might want to use Sky By Broadband just for the better ability to find out when a particular film is showing this way. The Sky box itself gives you no real ability to do this.

In other words, say I'm wondering if a film will be on regular Sky. I can keyword search for the film on Sky By Broadband. If get a match, then the download page tells me when it is playing. Sure, I can then download -- or I can know when to schedule a recording in my Sky box.

You can't search this way at all in a Sky box. Instead, if I want to see if something's going to be on, I have to page through the daily calendar or get off the couch, go in the kitchen and use my way superior search feature on the Windows Media Center PC in there (so impressive in inspired my search convergence column last year). Windows Media Center downloads all TV listings for me automatically. I can also record from Sky in it, since I route Sky into that machine through an aerial connection. But I don't do that, since the Sky+ recordings are better quality.

Exploring more, Sky By Broadband has a My Recommendations area. You can pick up to four genres and optionally, add in four star and four directors. I chose Action, Family, Animation and Sci-Fi and got a nice list back of things such as Garfield, The Swan Princess, I, Robot and Master and Commander:

How's it going with Jumanji? Slow going it seems, up to 33 percent now. OK, instead I browse around and find Adam Sandler's Eight Crazy Nights. That's a light 400MB; let's try it and I'll mark the time.

Within literally a minute, looking at my download folder in Windows, the file shoots up to 332MB and stops. (You can download video to any directory you like. Choose the Settings option and there's the ability to do choose a different download directory. My default was Program Files/KService/Downloads).

In my Download Queue, it reported 1 percent:

So my guess is the Sky software is creating a large file then updating it, adding to it or something else that goes beyond my understanding. What I do know is that while there's a big fat file, it wasn't created through downloaded content -- not at that moment.

While the film keeps going, I move on to other things. When I finally get around to checking again, an hour and fifteen minutes after starting, it's all downloaded. It might have finished earlier, as I wasn't constantly monitoring things.

OK, I go into the My Movie Library section, where it's listed. With a few clicks, it loads in a small windows filling about half my monitor. By clicking on the window, I can make it fill the entire screen, and the picture's letterboxed.

How about if I find the file and click on it directly? That fires up Windows Media Player, where it shows. The previous display seems to have simply been a special Sky call on Windows Media Center, putting the Sky By Broadband title at the top.

Supposedly, you can't burn this video and watch it on another machine or past the viewing periods. I haven't tried to test if this is the case or if so, if it can be cracked. Such things are beyond me and not really that much of a concern to me -- as I said, if I want to watch a movie while on the go, I'll just record it off regular Sky.

This is a good time to mention two areas you may want to visit. There's an online demo of the system that's pretty good at describing what I've now got. There's also a good FAQ area, which explains a variety of things like:

• You can only download to one PC in your home. How that's policed, I don't know. But I'll be testing it, because I'd rather have this on my laptop than my desktop.
   
• You have to download all of a movie before you can watch it.

There's also a FAQ system within the application itself, and some of the answers are different. For example, the online FAQ says you can NOT write to a DVD. But the application FAQ says:

All videos can be saved/backed up onto another disk however as playback requires a license you will only be able to play the video on the PC it was downloaded to, this may have to be viewed online depending on your parental control settings. This also means that the video will not be viewable after the license has expired.

The application FAQ also says this on video quality:

Videos are encoded at a bit rate of 860 kbps, and resolution of 540x432.

How long can you keep a download? Movies are said to be about 30 days. However, it varies. Stripes, for example, I can download and watch for another 262 days! OK, technically I think it means that I can download for another 262 days but once I do, I'll then likely have only 30 days to watch. But why bother, since I've got the extended director's cut on DVD.

Way up above, I showed that when I came in, I could choose Movies or Sports. I don't subscribe to the Sports package with Sky, nor am I supposed to be able to download content. That's proved to be the case. I could browse, but I couldn't download. Guess I won't be watching that clip of New Year's Eve soccerette Lucy Pinder that Sky's hawking with the line, "I bet you wish this page 3 stunner is around at midnight."

So the big conclusion?

• Cool. Fairly easy to use, isn't costing me anything and easier to pick and choose movies than regular Sky. Next time I'm heading on a trip, I might load my laptop with a couple of flicks for the kids to watch.
   
• Not Cool. Why all the freak out on digital protection online when I can copy these exact same movies from over the air, burn them to a DVD and watch them in anything. Take the White Chicks example above. That's sitting on a DVD in my living room right now, just waiting until I have the time and desire to finally view it.

Overall, this isn't going to replace me recording from my Sky box and archiving to DVD. What I'd really rather see is Sky make it possible to download various television series episodes on demand this way. If I've missed that one episode of the West Wing in the current season, nice if this was an on-demand way to get it.

Postscript: Pete Cole has a nice review here, and unlike me, he's in the movies on demand rather than TV on demand category. He also points over to this excellent review at informitv.

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