With the movie industry planning to finally notice the web, at least in the US, I’ve been hunting around for some good, old-fashioned entertainment. You’d think it would be easy these days, especially with sites like YouTube (www.youtube.com) available to stream videos at will – but in practice, it doesn’t quite work like that.

The YouTubes and Google Videos of the world are fine for ‘viral’ videos, but as yet, nobody wants our money for streaming TV episodes or online movies, and these sites are cracking down on anyone who tries to use them as a shortcut to an online Hollywood. Most recently, YouTube announced a 10-minute limit on newly uploaded videos to prevent people sharing episodes of South Park.

That’s not to say nobody is ready to take the strain. CinemaNow (www.cinemanow.com) is one of the few places offering complete, streamable movies. It’s a legitimate site, boasting both Sony and Microsoft as partners – indeed, it’s the service that provides movies on demand to Media Center PCs. It all works pretty well. The movies it shows you are protected by Windows Media DRM, which would normally annoy me, but in this case just mystifies me, because 99 per cent of them are free if you’re prepared to sit through an advert. They stream from fast servers, and are provided at a decent resolution, with only a trailer between you and the small-scale silver screen. It all seems pretty neat.

There is only one catch: a line-up of films that does to your brain what a threshing machine does to a chicken. Actually, no, that’s a little unfair. I can’t say I browsed through every page on offer, so I’m willing to concede that there may be some diamonds in the rough. There are cookery programs, and some kids’ puppet shows, and some genuine arthouse pieces, and plenty of other things. It’s just that the lion’s share is … how can I put this tactfully … largely given over to that special kind of zero-budget horror/sci-fi skin-flick that you’d normally only glimpse through late-night channel-hopping during a bout of chronic insomnia, and independent movies that – to steal a line from Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree – add new terror to life and make death a long-felt want.

There are horror films with names such as Hey… Stop Stabbing Me!; vile villains such as Peter Rottentail (“half-man, half-rabbit, all evil!”); and best of all, blurbs that try to sound mysterious and compelling, even when you can see quite clearly that the DVD box reads Swordsman with an Umbrella. We’re talking weapons-grade bad movies, served up and streamed for free. The PC Plus team wasted a whole afternoon just browsing the list: not even watching the movies, just reading out the descriptions. How can you read this description… “Male soldier test subjects are suddenly transformed into sexy women whose unstoppable DNA resembles that of ancient alligators”

…and not feel a certain inner peace at having had absolutely nothing – nothing at all – to do with its production? It’s cleansing, almost: the knowledge that however you may stuff things up in the future, never will you go into a room full of eager filmmakers and actors, and say the word “Repligators.” And you’re a better person for it. Even if your hobbies do include seal-clubbing, or macramé.

When Hollywood proper gets into the action, this probably won’t be as much fun. Right now, CinemaNow – along with most other companies that are trying to go online – has been stymied at every turn by a lack of support from the industry. It’s not as if they were given a choice between Harry Potter and Peter Rottentail, and then opted for the psycho bunny.

Still, this is slowly changing. The latest development from across the pond gives both CinemaNow and competitor Movielink a very different product to offer: pre-pay downloads of films such as King Kong and Brokeback Mountain that are intended to be kept, rather than simply streamed or rented.

They’ll be DRMed up to the hilt, of course – you won’t be able to burn them to a DVD to watch downstairs – and if you’re expecting lower prices as a result of this digital distribution, well, welcome to Earth. Instead, its makers are suggesting that the price will work out at around double the cost of a DVD, compensating for the extra convenience of not being able do as much with it. But that’s a whole other rant. And one that, unlike the films mentioned above, really is best watched closely and saved for later.