Online Movie Rentals
Choosing an Online Movie Rental Service
These days, renting DVDs and videos from the comfort of your own home is quickly becoming the norm, with millions of people now renting movies online. The original idea behind the concept was to save customers repeated inconvenient trips to the rental store by merely having to walk to their mailbox to return movies through the postal service. Coupled with a super-wide selection of movies that can be selected and queued using a home computer and Internet connection, online movie rental services have exploded in popularity.
Typically, a customer selects a number of movies he or she wants to watch and places them into a queue, or waiting list. The customer is allowed to have a preset number of movies (usually 1 to 3) rented out at any given time. When the customer is finished viewing a movie, they simply send it back in the mail in a pre-addressed postage-paid envelope supplied by the rental company. The turnaround time to receive the next movie in your queue can range from a day to a couple weeks (Blockbuster Online is typically the fastest).
Spearheading the trend are a number of online companies, most notably Blockbuster Online, which has now established itself as the number one player in the game by leveraging its existing brick-and-mortar stores and issuing free rental coupons. If you've ever been annoyed by the hassle of driving back to the video store just to return a movie, or have been stung by late fees, there has never been a better time to try out an online movie rental service, as they are all offering special deals in order to draw new customers.
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Blockbuster Online has established itself as the leading online movie rental service for a number of reasons. Blockbuster Online carries a huge number of movies and, more importantly, the widest selection of popular mainstream titles among any service. It also gives you the broadest format selection, offering Blu-Ray and HD-DVD movies that will fully utilize the capabilities of your HDTV. Blockbuster Online takes advantage of a postal scanning system to speed up your delivery of new movies; the next movie in your queue is immediately sent out whenever a movie you are returning has been scanned by the post office. Other services typically wait until a returned DVD has physically arrived back at their shipping center before sending out your next movie, which can potentially cause delays. Importantly, Blockbuster Online will not "throttle" your rentals ("throttling" means slowing down the shipping speed of DVDs if you are renting a lot of movies each month), allowing you to watch as many movies as you want. And now with Blockbuster Online's new "Total Access" program, you can also return any movies to the nearest Blockbuster store in your area, at which time you'll receive an instant free rental on the spot. Plus, Blockbuster Online gives you 2 free movie rental coupons every month delivered to your email, so you get access to even more movies. There are a number of rental plans to choose from; the most popular at this time is the 3 DVD rental plan, which is priced at $17.99 a month with an introductory $9.99 for the first month. Overall, Blockbuster Online delivers the best bang for the buck. |
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NetFlix is the originator of the online movie rental concept, first introducing the concept of "movies by mail" back in 1999. For a time, NetFlix was the only choice available, and it had built up an significant lead by the time newcomers such as Blockbuster Online joined the fray. Although competitors have steadily chipped away at NetFlix’s market share, NetFlix remains a solid choice and may particularly appeal to those who frequently rent older or hard-to-find titles, as it seems to carry a good selection of these types of films. One concern of note among NetFlix users is that you may possibly experience some "throttling" of DVD’s. Throttling refers to the practice of slowing down the speed and/or frequency of DVDs shipments to those users who rent movies very frequently, so that NetFlix won't lose money due to excess shipping costs. NetFlix has a similar pricing structure as Blockbuster, with its three DVD plan also being very popular among subscribers. Overall, we give NetFlix solid marks, as it offers a robust online movie renting experience. It's a proven company with a long, established track record, and you really can’t go wrong by choosing this service. |
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