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Last December, Sprint, one of the first U.S. carriers to stream videos to phones, introduced mSpot Movies, a service that delivers full-length feature films to mobile handsets. Today, the operator announced a first of its kind "pay-per-view" offering called Sprint Movies for mobile phones. There are important differences between the old and new services.

MSpot Movies streams films (as well as TV shows, music concerts and stand-up comedy) to a user's handset in bite-sized segments of about five minutes each. It features older titles that included 'Night of the Living Dead,' 'Short Circuit,' 'Angel and the Badmen,' 'Three Stooges,' and 'One-Eyed Jacks' at launch, for example. More of the Sunday afternoon, nothing else is on the tube variety than current cutting-edge programming.

Sprint Movies, on the other hand, features more than 45 titles out of the gate, with many newer ones like 'National Treasure,' 'Spider-Man 2,' 'Larry the Cable Guy: Health Inspector' and 'The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy ' as well as popular standbys such as 'Scarface,' 'Jaws,' and 'National Lampoon's Animal House.'

Alana Muller, Sprint director, entertainment product marketing, said in a statement, “Customers can take their mind off a busy day during a lunch break, breeze through a few minutes while waiting in the parking lot for a child's soccer practice to end, or make a two-hour delay at the airport much more bearable. And with child-friendly titles such as 'Herbie: Fully Loaded' and 'Babe,' Sprint Movies are also great to keep the kids busy in the backseat."

The carrier promises a DVD-player like experience with Sprint Movies (albeit on a much smaller screen). So you can stream a film all at once or divide it into chapters, so as to play, pause and skip forward or backward between them. Resume a movie at the exact point where you left off as well.

Each film in the service costs between $3.99 and $5.99. A rental lasts between 24 hours and a week, with hour extensions available for an extra 99 cents.

Sprint will continue to offer MSpot Movies for a monthly subscription free of $6.95 for unlimited content.

Muller said Sprint has seen 30 percent month over month subscriber growth for mSpot Movies since its launch. She indicated that the carrier thinks Sprint Movies could prove even more popular; likely because of its more recent and classic film lineup and advanced viewing capabilities, in spite of its higher cost.

All Sprint Movie titles are edited where necessary to meet TV-14 standards.

See next page for a full list of Sprint Movies available at launch.