This is where I am coming from: when it is about watching movies I live entirely in the past. I like to watch classic movies more than contemporary movies. I have even an Evernote list of classic movies that I want to see again.

Consequently, I do not have a TV set in my house. The local TV channels do not provide the content that I am after.

It was only during the Covid-19 lockdowns that I have started to watch more movies than before. I have been at my desktop computer anyway, so it was a short step to arrive at that point. And I have experienced that watching an entire movie is much better than clicking through random Youtube clips with the advertisements in between.

I never liked the time-consuming old-style DVD rental shops and today they are gone, so it was time to find ways to watch entire movies online.

Ways to Watch Online Movies

I have first checked out these set-top boxes that come for US$ 50 or so, but I do not like them because I do not even have a TV set anymore. I prefer watching movies on my desktop computer. This is probably because that reminds me more of my pre-Covid-19 life when I was flying around in airplanes, eating aircraft food while binge-watching movies on the inflight entertainment systems that come with small TV screens. I must truly live in the past.

And I prefer paid movies over downloaded free copies because then I know what I get before starting to watch a movie. I hate wasting my time with bad quality copies that stop somewhere in the middle or that come in the Hungarian version with French subtitles. Please get me right, I understand the French language well but I find it much more pleasant to watch a movie in the original English language with English subtitles because that would also help me to improve my English. Renting such a movie online seldom costs more than US$ 3.00, and I find that this is money well spent.

I am not a Netflix client and I will not become one because Netflix does not have most of the movies that I am interested in. A Netflix subscription is also not worth it because I watch less than four (4) movies per month. And I do not like Internet subscriptions because I always forget to cancel them when I do not use them anymore. I am a typical pay-as-you-go person.

Online Movie Finder Services

Paid movies from one of the mainstream movie providers are good enough for me. But actually finding these movies was not so easy before the time of online movie finder services.

My favorite online movie finder is here: https://www.justwatch.com/

Not all movies are available in all countries, so I usually need to change the country in my user profile (click the yellow person symbol with the gear wheel) see below

 

It is important to use a VPN that you have to set to the same country as the movie finder country (Click here, if you want to know how a VPN works).

justwatch.com usually displays several providers for one and the same movie. I find that Youtube is the least complicated one when it comes to the payment system. Other movie rental providers, such as Amazon often mechanisms in place that prevents me from renting a movie if I do not have a credit card from that country from where I renting a movie.

What I also found out is that – if the movie is not loading because of licensing problems – it sometimes helps to copy/paste the movie´s Youtube URL into a new Internet browser window and load the movie from fresh.

Watch Out: Internet Payments

Payment is usually done with a credit card. In the Internet, do not use that important credit card that you use for your regular subscriptions. I have a special credit card that I use for Internet purchases, among others (click here). I just block that credit card when I see any unusual movement on my account statement, and I get a new credit card without the need of updating all my existing regular subscriptions.

Conclusion

That is about it. That is all you need to know about watching good old movies online.

Have fun watching your favorite classic movie in the original language!

Martin “living in the past” Schweiger