With all the technology available today, downloading movies is easy and fast, but it's important to make sure you only use legal movie downloads or you could get yourself into a heap of trouble. Unfortunately, there are a lot of websites that are offer illegal movie downloads and sometimes you may not even be aware that everything is not on the up and up. In fact, some of them even claim that the downloads are legal when they are not!

So how do you know if your site is legal or illegal? For the most part a site that offers legal downloads will be professionally done and, while there are some free ones out there, for the most part they will have a free - after all you really do get what you pay for! Try to find out about the company that runs the site - if it is a large US company then chances are the downloads are legal. That's not to say that small offshore companies are illegal.

When using a site that has legal movie downloads, you can expect the navigation to be easy to use and the downloads to be of good quality. Payments options may range from monthly to yearly and you'll probably also have options to rent the movie, buy the movie or burn it to DVD. You might even be able to find some free movies as a little perk. The free ones probably won't be a mainstream movie, but sometimes some of these made by independents or smaller studios can be interesting to see.

Renting a movie legally is typically your least expensive option for viewing. You usually get it for 24 hours and during that time you can watch it as much as you want. You can also buy the movie but that will cost you more, then again, you get to download it to your computer and are free to watch it as many times as your want forever. Some movie download sites let you burn a movie to DVD. This is the most expensive solutions but you will get the highest quality image and you get to keep the DVD and watch it over and over again.

All in all, it's best to stick to sites that offer legal movie downloads. You'll get better quality and won't be at risk of prosecution. Also, the illegal sites are often loaded with viruses and spy ware, whereas the legal ones will give you a clean download with no threat to your computer.