A brief idea of what to look for in an online movie rental service, focusing mainly on Netflix and Blockbuster.
Renting Movies Online
If you’re like me, you don’t like going to the movie store. Long lines, bad selections, and the fat guy restocking the shelves that smells like an abandoned fish store; it’s not a whole lot of fun. Luckily, since we live in the age of the Internet, we have the ability to stay in our homes while renting movies, until we reach the point where we smell as bad as the restocking guy.
Online movie rental websites are becoming wildly popular, due to their ease of use and massive selections. They're easy to use; the services send out return shipping materials and pay all shipping charges. An added benefit is that nobody can judge your movie tastes; it’s between you and your mailman that you rented the first full season of “Full House” on DVD. Here are a few tips for picking an online move rental site and plan that suits your needs.
Selection
One of the perks of being able to rent online is that you can typically find just about anything you want to rent; foreign, independent, and cult films that your local store would never carry can be rented with ease, along with obscure television shows and pretty much anything else you can think of that's been released on DVD. Of course, that's only if your movie rental website has an adequate selection. Netflix and Blockbuster.com are two rental sites with massive selections; check to see that they have what you're looking for. You may want to test the waters by searching for a few obscure films; some titles you might try are The Perfect Lamb or William B. Horschmeier’s The Fawning. If your movie rental site has these films, then its selection is more than adequate, since I made these names up.
For the movies that actually exist, check to see that the service provides you with unbiased movie reviews. These can be a great way to see if movies are worth renting, and it's entertaining to read the reviews of movies like Blood Orgy of the She-Devils (this is a real movie, by the way). It's even better if the site offers user reviews of movies. Both Blockbuster and Netflix also will recommend movies based on what you've been renting, which can be a great help if you're anticipating a dull weekend but have no idea what to rent.
Look at the queue management system of the sites; this allows you to change the shipping order of the movies you've chosen. While it may seem petty, I found NetFlix's queue management extremely easy compared to Blockbuster's confusing and bug-ridden system.
Don't forget that these sites have TV shows on DVD, as well. This can be a great resource to see shows that you missed the first time, or shows on pay-cable. It's great to catch “The Sopranos,” but it's not exactly worth a full subscription to HBO.
If you're mainly looking to watch TV shows, another video rental site you might want to consider is Apple's iTunes. The iTunes software is mainly made for music, but they've begun making television series available for purchase and immediate download—shows such as “Lost” are available for $2 per episode, perfect for late night show cravings without making a commitment to an online movie company. The shows can even be viewed on iPods equipped with video ability. However, iTunes will probably not offer full length movies, and currently only offers select shows.
Price
A good rental site will offer a selection of plans. Think about how much you’re planning on budgeting for the service. You may want to start out with just one movie rented at a time, and see if an online movie rental service is for you; some people just can't bring themselves to stuff the DVDs in the envelopes and make it to the mailbox everyday. Blockbuster and Netflix both offer free trials, which allow you to try their service for a few weeks—use this time to develop a sense of how many movies you want to rent at a time.Be sure to look at the benefits of each plan offered by a rental site. Some will offer free coupons or more movies per month if you subscribe to a better plan. I've had subscriptions to both Blockbuster.com and Netflix, and Blockbuster had more of these benefits and a lower price. The Blockbuster subscription even got me a coupon for a free used movie from one of their stores.
Shipment speed
If you’re renting online, you probably want to have your movies as quickly as possible. Check the turnaround time of the sites you're looking at. Blockbuster and Netflix were both good in my experience, though Netflix was for some reason generally faster at shipping their movies.
You'll want to make a note of when you have time to watch movies. If you just watch movies on the weekend, it's pretty easy to structure your mailing schedule so that you always have a few DVDs to pop in. If, however, you need a new movie every day, you will require as-fast-as-possible ship times, the biggest movie plan possible, and a budget that accommodates such a plan. A few of my friends have canceled their cable service and use movie rental websites as their sole source of entertainment.
Other Rental Sites
Finally, you may want to consider other rental sites, as well. Some music services such as Rhapsody and Napster offer music rental plans. This enables you to listen to a huge selection of songs on your computer or your Janus-equipped mp3 player (it won't work on an iPod, though). If you cancel your plan, the music you'd downloaded becomes unavailable until you restart the plan again. This can be a great way to expose yourself to new music, usually for around fifteen dollars a month.
If you like video games, services like Gamefly rent out console games for a relatively low cost. Such services work the same way as Netflix, though the ship times are usually slower. Playstation, Xbox, and Gamecube users should be pleasantly surprised by the selection offered by Gamefly in particular; the site even allows you to buy games you have rented from their service, and all shipping is free. Computer games can't be rented from these services, however; they're too commonly pirated.
When you rent media through the Internet, entertainment gets alot easier. Hopefully, you'll find a movie rental service that fits your need and budget