Lycos Cinema: Watch movies with friends across the world in real-time

Remember Lycos? Once upon a time they were a search engine and internet portal, just like Google and Yahoo! And today they're... well, actually they're still around, much to our surprise. And today the company launched its most interesting product in ages: an online video site with a social twist.

When you start watching a movie in Lycos Cinema, you can invite friends to watch along with you, no matter where they are. The video will play back on all of your computers at almost exactly the same instant. So users can chat about the movie in real-time as they watch. The person who starts the movie can pause, rewind, and fast forward the video stream. And the controls are almost instantaneous. If you've got a broadband connection, you can skip ahead to the end of a movie in just a matter of seconds, with no buffering.

The site features both free and paid content. When you rent a movie, you can pay one fee for a one person rental, another for "5 seats," and the top price for "10 seats." The prices seem reasonable, topping out at around $6 for 10 seats. But there's one major problem. The content sucks. We're talking, makes Joost, and even Babelgum look good sucks. The most exciting thing we could find in the free content was a Godzilla movie. The rental store content is about as fresh, with titles like Convoy and Monster from a Prehistoric Planet in the featured content section. You can imagine what the non-featured content looks like.

Tags: chat, lycos, lycos-cinema, movies