Free, legal Hollywood movie streaming comes to the UK

BlinkBox offers free movies
BlinkBox offers free movies

All this week and up until Sunday, Blinkbox is offering free website streaming to show off the befits of watching movies online legally.

The website's spin-off site Fullstreamahead will offer users £20 credit to watch movies online, with the reasoning: "To educate and encourage people, including those tempted to try illegal file-sharing, to adopt legal methods for quickly and easily accessing movie content online."

Making people aware

Partnering with the BFI and the five major movie studios – Paramount, Fox, Warners, Universal and Sony – BlinkBox is hoping that by giving away some free online movies, users will be tempted to start paying for quality online content.

CEO of BlinkBox, Michael Comish, believes that the week-long freebie will cost the company money but it will be beneficial in the long run, telling the Guardian: "If millions of people take up this offer, yes, it is going to cost us a lot of money.

"But the cost of not doing it is far larger. If we do not make people aware that there is good-quality streaming video available, then we will hit a tipping point in online piracy."

BlinkBox recently announced that it has made its service compatable with the PS3.

To try out watching movies online and for free (for this week at least) log on to www.fullstreamahead.co.uk now. The offer is on until 13 June.

Marc Chacksfield

Marc Chacksfield is the Editor In Chief, Shortlist.com at DC Thomson. He started out life as a movie writer for numerous (now defunct) magazines and soon found himself online - editing a gaggle of gadget sites, including TechRadar, Digital Camera World and Tom's Guide UK. At Shortlist you'll find him mostly writing about movies and tech, so no change there then.