A Review of Online Movie Rental Services

It’s the latest craze… renting movies from the comfort of your own home. Nowadays, most popular movies can be found within days of their release on the internet illegeally, so why shouldn’t there be a legal option for those of us wanting to rent movies without living in fear of retribution from the MPAA.

There are two main types of services that have emerged on the marketplace for digital movie rental. The oldest kind are mail order DVD rental services. These services will ship a DVD to your own, which you then watch and send back to the DVD maker. The second kind of service allows you to download digital movies to your hard drive and play them back on your computer.

I’m going to review two of each of these services today. On the mail order side, I’ll be reviewing NetFlix and the recently launched Blockbuster mail order service. On the digital side, I’ll take a look at CinemaNow and Movielink.

 

NetFlix

Price: $17.99/month for up to 3 DVD’s at a time

I was a long time NetFlix fan starting back near it’s inception in 1999. I was impressed with the service then, and I’m impressed with the service now. The DVD’s generally arrive within one day of placing an order with the company, although keep in mind that these are shipping via the US Postal Service, which means it’s subject to all the quality issues that go along with it.

The selection at NetFlix has generally been good – they usually carry at least a couple of copies of some of the more obscure titles available, which means that you can rent DVD’s of almost anything you can think of. The frequently purchase DVD’s for rental that are rare and somewhat hard to find at any of your local rental stores. They do a great job of keeping a significant number of mainstream DVD’s in stock, and getting new releases is usually quite fast.

Blockbuster

Price: $17.48/month for up to 3 DVD’s at a time, plus 2 free rentals at any Blockbuster store per month.

Blockbuster has the same thing going for it as well as against it; it’s Blockbuster. As an advantage, Blockbuster is able to offer you two free rentals a month in any of their stores. This means in a movie pinch when your friends feel all your movies are completely uninteresting, you can run to the local blockbuster and pick up whatever is more appropriate.

The disadvantage to Blockbuster is the same reasons I hate shopping at the stores. They focus almost exclusively on big name movies, and devote very little time into obtaining even a few copies of any movie even remotely controversial. The last time I looked, American Movie was mixed in with softcore porn under the “special interest” category. And this is somehow fitting. Intelligent film viewers have as much importance to blockbuster as 16 years old who get off on women in bathing suits. Their selection both in store and online will be limiting and the quantities of independent film will be quite low.

Blockbuster is also one of the leading advocates to censorship in film. And to make things worse they don’t adequately mark which movies are cleaned up ‘family friendly’ versions. I’m afraid I do not feel comfortable as an artist putting business in the hands of such a company. This is not a neighborhood video store you are supporting when you buy from Blockbuster, but rather a mass media conglomerate with far more focus on building in suburban sprawl and glossing over anything with any controversy in America.

Verdict: NetFlix – A mere $0.50 more and you can have a much better selection and better customer service.

Digital Movies

I originally had started using Movielink because I got a $30 gift certificate when I signed up for my cable modem service. I’ll have to admit I was kind of excited at the time. The prospect of being able to watch any movie I wanted at the drop of a hat seemed like a great idea. I also had the ability to dump images from my computer screen to my TV, so I really didn’t see any difference between the digital movies and a regular DVD.

The pricing on both these services is somewhat lacking. At Movielink, rentals range from about $.69 for the ‘selection of the day’ to $3.99 for your standard new release. (Movielink also offers a 25% discount for college students) CinemaNow has a wider disparity in pricing. They do not run a daily special, and their prices range from $1 to upwards of $20. Now, before the $20 sticker price at CinemaNow turns you off, you must keep in mind that CinemaNow carries pornographic films for users of age. Although Movielink does offer some special features for certain movies, the vast majority of films contain just the feature film in one language. $3.99 seems like a lot of money to spend on an online rental, considering that you can rent the same film at just about any rental store for a little bit less.

The digital quality of the films is good. Although certainly not perfect, it would be difficult to tell on a standard home theatre system that you are watching a heavily compressed digital stream instead of the lightly compressed DVD stream that you usually watch. The sound is stereo, so those of you with 5.1 Dolby Digital systems are probably going to notice a difference between the audio streams versus a DVD.

Verdict: Movielink. Overall Movielink runs a better shop, they run more frequent specials and do a good job of making a good number of films downloadable at a reduced price.

 

Overall Verdict: It’s hard to say that any one service will be able to fill all your movie needs. While Netflix and Blockbuster are in the long run a lot cheaper for anyone who rents movies fairly often and will prevent those nasty late fees that you’ll rack up at the video store, it’s hard to plan out what kind of film you’ll want to see on Wednesday on Monday. And while online rentals can promise that instant gratification, you are really at the whim of what movie is available and which is on special. If you like the movie, chances are you’ll download it, but otherwise hit your local (and preferably independently owned) video store.