Online movie rental is growing in popularity, but it remains a temporary, flawed solution. While we wait for technology to catch up with the far-reaching promises that were made years ago (that’s right, I am referring to instant movies via the ubiquitous broadband promise), we’ll continue to see greater and greater demand for online movie rentals.

So for those who are now contemplating a decision to try an online rental house, or for those who are considering changing services, here are a few factors that you should consider in making your decision:

Shipping Facilities: so that your DVD’s arrive quickly, you will want to ensure that your movie service has a distribution center near you. This can make the difference between a 1 to 2 day turnaround, and a 3 to 4 day turnaround. This consistent turnaround time will become important to you as a user of the service so that you can plan your returns and rentals around typical viewing nights.

DVD Selection: the number of titles available is a large consideration. Many movie watchers are only interested in new releases, but you might also want to consider what the inventory of TV series, classics, and movies from the past two decades is like You might even join the ranks of those who turned off cable entirely once they began using a rental service. Having regular access to series hits from HBO, Showtime, and network television is very attractive.

DVD Availability: A wide selection of movies is only one consideration — having enough copies of each title is also important. This figure will probably never be disclosed, but for the most part, the more popular the service, the deeper their inventory. In this area, Netflix is generally considered to outrank Blockbuster.

Plan Selection: each rental service should have a plan that meets your needs, but some offer more flexibility than others. Examine your movie viewing habits and be sure your chosen rental service has a plan that fits.

Ease of Use: as you build your rental queue and look for movies to rent, you will begin to appreciate more and more how easy a web site is to use. Looking at things like site response times, the ability to search on multiple criteria, overall site availability, information in areas like mouseover boxes, navigability, etc. will have a big impact on your satisfaction with a service. I personally find this one of the top three factors to easily rent DVD titles.

Specialized Features: each service will have characteristics that make it unique from the other services. For example, Netflix has a very convenient movies on demand section. The selection of titles isn’t great, but is still better than a swift kick in the pants. Similarly, the ability to walk into a local store to return movies or rent new ones, as you get with the Blockbuster service, are also very important to some.

When you campare all of the characteristics, there are really on two practical choices for a rental service, and those are Netflix and Blockbuster. To look at how each of these rental houses stacks up with each other, and to see which one’s best for you, check out the Netflix and Blockbuster review referenced below. It stacks the services up side-by-side, and can help you make a better decision.

Similar Posts:

• Comparing the Online DVD Rental Plans
• Choosing the Right Online Movie Rental Service
• Choosing the Perfect DVD Rental Service
• Netflix or Blockbuster: Which is Right For You?
• An Objective Measure of the Value of Netflix

Tags: Movies-TV

This entry was posted on Friday, January 9th, 2009 at 9:07 am and is filed under Movies-TV. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.