CinemaNow - Prometheus Pre-Purchase (Immediate Delivery)

I had a long nightmarish ordeal getting this to work but rather than explain the whole thing let me just give you some tips: - If you're buying this in store, you should have a code on your receipt. If they tell you they'll just email it, insist on having them cancel it out and re-purchase. If there is no code, you will never get an email. - The instructions tell you to enter the code on cinemanow.com. DON'T DO THIS FROM A SMARTPHONE. It will tell you that your OS isn't supported and rather than put the video in your library for watching on xbox, it just considers the code used at that point and you need a new one. I spent literally 6 hours of my life to bring you this information.

This digital version of Prometheus is technically free, so there's only so much room for complaint. That said, if you were hoping to take advantage of Best Buy's advertised ability to "Pre-order on Blu-ray and watch in HD on CinemaNow tonight," make sure you know what you're getting. To start with, there's the definition of "tonight" – you may be waiting hours or longer to receive your code via email (mine took about 10 hours to arrive), so don't make any plans around watching this right away. (Say what you want about those impatient jerks who have to have everything immediately – this is essentially what Best Buy is advertising.) Then there's the issue of watching in HD – CinemaNow will let you watch it in HD, provided you have the right device. Unfortunately, that doesn't include a PC or Mac. Game consoles and various other CinemaNow-enabled players and TVs will play it in HD, but computers are relegated to lower quality (2200 Kbit/s). Mac users are also limited to streaming, whereas PC users can also download the movie and play it in CinemaNow's player. There are some other quirks in the process, like the PS3 client's strange inability to allow input of email address logins, but those are resolved easily enough (see the CinemaNow support page for details). The HD playback is not the sharpest you'll see, so I wouldn't make CinemaNow my first choice for HD movies, but hey, it didn't really cost you anything.

Be wary of the "Preorder the Blu-Ray now and watch it tonight on CinemaNow" option - it took CinemaNow 3+ hours to give me access to the movie. Even then, it told me that my dual-27" monitor PC system could not play the file back in HD, but that my PS3 could. However, I ran into numerous issues streaming the HD movie through my PS3 even though I am on a 40mbps (5MB/s) connection. We ended up renting another HD movie from Vudu and it streamed without any issues - go figure. I guess I'll end up watching this on my PC for the time being, but even that requires installation of the CinemaNow downloader and player. This service is definitely not ready for primetime.

I pre-ordered Prometheus and got this Cinemanow copy free. The setup of Cinemanow is very complicated and then download code came 4 hours after ordering it. Ultimately I was able to play the movie on my PC and my xBox 360 (after installing the Cinemanow app) but not my LG Smart TV that had Cinemanow built in app. So, after an hour of reseting everything and getting the xBox up and running right, I finally played the movie. Even though the xBox only streams in 720p, it was gorgeous. No studdering or buffering. Hats off to Microsoft for making an app that actually works like it should. A week later, my 3D copy came in the mail and it was awesome as well. This is the difinitive version for 3D TV owners and the extras on the 3D version are worth a $25 purchase alone. Thus, if you missed the pre-order bonus, just buy the blu-ray or 3D version, skip Cinemanow. Although, Cinemanow works WAY better than Vudu.com.

Like many others, I ordered online and waited 18 hours to receive my redemption code! That is absurd for something that is advertised as "watch it tonight"! Best Buy is not helping themselves any with this proprietary digital service.

CinemaNow, the software used for this Prometheus offer doesn't all you to watch it on mobile devices. What software in 2012 doesn't allow you to do so? If you're on the go like me, don't purchase this.