The Plextor PX-Q840U is one of the first drives to offer support for Sonic Solution’s Qflix technology. This implementation of the DVD-Download specification gives consumers the ability to purchase movies and TV shows online and download them to their computers. Using a drive like the PX-Q840U, they can then be burned to DVD using special Qflix media. These discs use the same copy protection (CSS) found on commercially released DVDs and can be played back on most standard DVD and Blu-ray Disc players.
To do all of this, you will need to use Roxio Venue, which comes bundled with the PX-Q840U. This software lets you connect directly to CinemaNow and navigate through its catalog of Qflix titles. The main page lists the six newest releases. Otherwise, if you're looking for an older movie, you can browse by genre (Comedy, Drama, Action, Thriller, Family). Clicking on a movie will bring up additional information such as the director and starring actors as well as a brief synopsis.
While CinemaNow has thousands of movies for sale through its main website, only a handful of them can be downloaded and burned to DVD. Prices also range from $7.99 for an older, catalog title to $19.99 for a new release.
To test the Qflix capabilities of the PX-Q840U, I purchased The Chronicles of Riddick. Along with being able to download and burn this movie to DVD, CinemaNow's license lets me play it on up to three desktops, laptops or compatible portable devices. Once I logged in and selected a payment method (PayPal, credit card or gift certificate), I was able to begin the download process.
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The amount of time it takes to download the movie will vary depending on your internet connection. In my case, it took about 1:35 to download The Chronicles of Riddick over my 3Mb DSL connection. The movie is 1:59 in length and the downloaded file was about 1.97GB in size. One nice thing with Venue is that you can watch the movie on the computer while it is downloading. This way you don't have to wait for the entire movie to download before you can watch it.
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Venue also has the ability to burn your movies to DVD. To save time, you can automate the process by telling Venue to start burning the DVD before the movie has finished downloading. Otherwise, you can burn it manually once the download is complete.
Burning it manually can take a considerable amount of time. With The Chronicles of Riddick, it took Venue nearly three hours to prepare the movie and burn it to RiDATA's Qflix DVD media. Needless to say, you'll want to take Venue's recommendation and start burning the DVD while the movie is still downloading.
As promised, the Qflix DVD burned by Venue played fine in my Lite-On DVD recorder and Playstation 3. While lacking a menu or any sort of extras, there were chapter marks every five minutes.
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The PX-Q840U also comes with the CinemaNow Media Manager. While lacking Venue's burning capabilities, CinemaNow Media Manager can be used to mange your video library and download queue as well as play movies purchased or rented from CinemaNow.
