Up until now, having a movie night with friends or family meant that everybody had to get together at someone's house and gather in front of the television (or visiting a local movie theater). Now however, using it's patent-pending SimulStream technology, Lycos Cinema (when was the last time you heard anything from Lycos?!) introduces a web-based service that lets multiple users view the same movie or TV episode while socializing at the same time with anyone, anywhere.

While registration for Lycos Cinema is free, the social viewing platform includes both free and on-demand paid content. There are plenty of selections to choose from, though most of what is available seems to be old classics which may not appeal to the younger audience Cinema is sure to attract at the beginning. One glance through the CoverFlow-styled free and rental sections reveals such vintage films as 1967's "Monster from a Prehistoric Planet" and H.G. Wells' 1958 television series "Invisible Man." Of course there is also children-themed content, also, such as Little Lulu, Rocky and Bullwinkle, and Felix the Cat among others.

When it comes to the paid rental content, Lycos Cinema's approach gets innovative. The price of the rental depends on how many viewers the paying user wishes to have attend the viewing party. One seat (a private viewing) is priced at just $1.99, while 5 seats costs $3.99 and the 10-seat maximum runs $5.99 per viewing. As with most other web video rental services, users have 30 days to start watching and 24 hours to finish a video.

Videos are played within a pop-up window with a chat interface at the bottom (see screenshot below) and the player can be resized to either full-screen mode or mini-screen mode. One problem that I did find with full-screen mode is the inability to type a comment into the chat box. I was able to add smileys (through the smiley shortcut menu), but the text entry box somehow disabled by ability to type text. In the normal window mode though, everything worked fine.

Within the Social Scene, users can communicate in the cinema lobby and find public viewing parties started by other users. The service limits the number of users attending a public party to 10, but my only concern here is whether having 10 people watching will slow down the experience and make videos choppy. Seeing as how the service just launched though, I was only able to get into a viewing party with 2 other people (3 total) which didn't seem to cause any noticeable gaps or pauses in playback.

For those who want to schedule a party for later, Lycos Cinema adds an event calendar feature which enables users to schedule a viewing for later in the week or even later in the month at a specific time. Additionally, Lycos has teamed up with Independent Features to create a sort of online independent film festival which will utilize the SimulStream technology to combine social viewing and web-based voting.

Lycos Cinema has developed some great ideas that will help online video watching become more social, but in its infancy it is still lacking. A major priority for the Lycos team should be to sign on with the major studios so that newer releases can be made available for rent (or for free). Cinema has no chance at keeping up with the free Hulu service or paid iTunes rentals if users are forced to watch content from 10, 25 or even 50 years ago.