Taking pages from both the Napster and iTunes playbook,
Starz has announced their new internet initiative, Vongo. Like Napster, Vongo is based on a monthly subscription fee, while emulating the iTunes Store by offering the ability to download movies to (some of) your portable devices. Since Vongo will be using a Windows Media format, it won’t be playable on your iPod, however. I’d be interested in this if they weren’t charging so much for it. I mean, I already pay a monthly fee for Starz on my cable package, so I damn sure don’t want to have to pay another 10-14 bucks a month just for the ability to download a flick to my laptop when I’m going on an airplane.

For $9.99 per month, subscribers will have unlimited access to watch more than 1,000 movies at any time on a laptop or a portable media player, the company said. The fee also gives users access to a live stream of the Starz cable channel.

For an additional fee of $3.99 per movie, programming not available on the main subscription service that is made available after six months of a movie’s theater release can be downloaded for rental.

Vongo differs from the entrenched competitors which mostly offer movie download rentals on a pay-per-view basis. Vongo said it plans to give viewers access to a much wider breadth of films, which are also available on its cable channel.

Ultimately, the service aims to be a “one-stop” shop for all types of online and portable movie viewing, executives said.

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