If you’re a fan of independent or foreign films it can be surprisingly difficult to track down new and interesting movies. You’re pretty much limited to catching films at the local art-house during the first run, waiting for them to run on IFC or the Sundance channel, waiting for a copy to become available on Netflix, or splurging on a DVD of a movie you may only watch once. Any way you look at it, there’s a lot of waiting around involved and it can be difficult to figure out what movies are worth seeing. A new download service called Jaman might just change all of this.

Jaman claims to have the rights to legally distribute over 1,000 foreign and independent films for download. That’s far more than iTunes or any other legal movie download service. Through partnerships with a number of film festivals Jaman also offers films that are currently on the festival circuit. For example, several of the movies currently screening at the Tribeca film festival in New York are available right now on Jaman, and films from the upcoming San Francisco International Film Festival will be available on Jaman next week.

Besides the emphasis on foreign and independent films there are a few things that clearly set Jaman apart from Amazon Unbox and similar services.

• Jaman emphasizes social interaction between users. Jaman members can create and join groups based around their specific interests. The social features of Jaman also facilitate discovery and create a virtual community of foreign and independent film lovers.
• Unlike Unbox and most of the other movie services (iTunes excluded), Jaman is cross-platform and offers a viewer that runs on both Windows and Mac.
• Pricing is reasonable. Jaman charges just $4.99 to purchase a movie for unlimited viewing, and $1.99 to rent a movie for seven days. Here’s the best part: during the initial beta period most movie rentals are free.

In the past I’ve been skeptical about online film services because of pricing and compatibility issues resulting from DRM restrictions, but Jaman’s combination of features tempted me to give the service a try. Besides, nearly all of Jaman’s movie rentals are currently free, so there wasn’t much risk involved in my decision.

I happily created my Jaman account and downloaded a free rental of Takeshi Kitano’s Takeshis’. The movie took a little longer than two hours to download. Jaman says that popular films are downloaded directly from the company’s servers, while less popular films are distributed through a peer-to-peer network.

Once the download was complete I found that the client software worked flawlessly on my Mac and the video quality was comparable to the iTunes videos I’ve watched.

The one downside to Jaman is that all of service’s movies are protected by a proprietary DRM scheme. As a result you’ll have to use Jaman’s client software to watch movies, and you’re pretty much limited to viewing them on your computer (or hooking your computer up to your TV). I’ve done my share of railing against DRM in the past, but I’ve also been clear that one of the big issues is that many services charge a fee comparable to buying a physical media product. DRM restrictions aren’t quite as bad when, 1) the product is priced at a level that is comparable to a traditional rental, and 2) the service makes an effort to support a range of hardware devices. Jaman manages to minimize the DRM annoyance by meeting both of these criteria.

If you have any interest at all in the foreign or independent films I recommend you give Jaman a try. Especially during the beta period when you can do so at no cost.

Technorati Tags: Jaman, Movies, Foreign Films, Independent Films, DRM

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