What if there was a Napster for movies? What if you could view feature films in your dorm room before they were released to stores? What if you had the best hits of South Park on demand from your laptop? Soon you will be able to.

It sounds like the movie studios' worst nightmare. Yet it has several major movie studios' blessing. Sound like a college student's dream? A fantasy? Wake up, it's coming to Wake Forest soon.

Three years ago Brett Goldberg founded Cflix.com with the idea of creating a legal Napster for movies. Last year Duke University, his alma mater, first tested the system. Next week, Information Systems here will begin a beta test to determine if students are interested.

According to Len Waldron, associate director of telecommunications, the university and the studio like the program is because it "allows users to enjoy content in a cost effective and legal way."

Cflix believes is has a perfect fit for Internet distribution. Its content is not designed to compete with higher quality DVDs nor traditional TV broadcasts. Instead it offers an on-demand service via the university's local area network.

Cflix simply augments current distribution methods, according to Goldberg. "If someone wants to watch South Park on TV, they will watch Comedy Central at 10 p.m. on Wednesday nights. If someone wants to watch South Park on Cflix, they can watch it anytime of the day or night."

On-demand simply means that the movie can be viewed anytime the viewer wants instead of at regularly scheduled times. The quality of the video should match VHS tapes and students should be able to use their laptops to send the video to a TV. Students will be able to pause, stop, rewind and fast-forward through programs just like a VCR or DVD player.

This is a particularly radical idea to many in Hollywood. In response to Napster and subsequent file sharing services, music labels started up their own Internet distribution services. For about a month a subscriber gets to listen to a set number of MP3s. Cflix is dramatically different.

Cflix has a much lower price and does not limit the number of titles you can view. Students would receive six "channels" of content for approximately per month. These channels represent different categories of programs. An ESPN channel will offer classic sports, including Demon Deacon sports. Comedy Central will offer stand up comics, classic South Park episodes, and other Comedy Central shows. Atom Films will provide independent films from around the world.

Hit movies could be purchased for a small fee. Many movies would be recent hits that have not yet been released to stores. Others would be classic cult favorites such as National Lampoon's European Vacation, and many more.

CinemaNow will provide independent films from many companies including Lions Gate and others. The exact cost of viewing these movies has not yet been established, nor whether or not students could pay with Deacon Dollars.

"This is the first step that studios have taken to get content, particularly entertainment, to users beyond traditional distribution methods," Waldron said. This is seen by many as a way to stop students from sharing digital copies of movies. Not only is this a relatively cheap, legal alternative, but also it would free up some bandwidth currently being consumed by file-sharing.

According to Waldron, "college students represent a segment of the market that has proven to be most vulnerable to use and abuse." He pointed out that there is "only a small segment who want to steal content, there is a large segment that wants to be legal." IS believes that if students are presented with a cheap, legal method of viewing movies, most will chose not to download illegally.

A major part of the beta test is to help convince the movie studios that Cflix.com can deliver content securely. According to the Cflix.com Web site over nine levels of encryption are used to deliver the content. Although the files are buffered on each viewer's computer, they are never really on the hard drive, making the files extremely hard to hack.

The daunting task of protecting the films is complicated by maintaining high quality picture and sound. According to Goldberg, "Cflix is very high quality, not a typical streaming media platform." Finally, Cflix needs to keep the file size small so that college networks can handle the added traffic.

Despite these challenges, Goldberg remains optimistic. "Cflix provides a better way to fit your entertainment lifestyle and habits."

Starting Nov. 4, select students will test the program for free with over 40 hit movies, 20 independent films, and six channels of content. Over the next two weeks students will evaluate the program and give IS and Cflix feedback to see if the program should continue on a regular basis.