Michael Hawk
I’m of the generation that can remember the dawn of the video rental store. Ours was “Video Plus” and, excitingly, it was owned by the parents of a girl in my class! You went in and pulled a rubber band with a tag off the box and handed it to the guy behind the counter and he gave you the VHS or Beta of your choice. It was all very Jetsons. However, only big Hollywood movies were available with the idea of watching TV shows practically martian.
These days TV rental is thriving via your mailbox. If I don’t buy something, I go straight to my rental queue at Netflix where I’ve caught up on shows like Termintor: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, The Wire, and currently Lost. With my work at home lifestyle, Netflix has become life blood, but what about Blockbuster Online? Let’s examine your choices.
Netflix has an insane selection, easy to navigate, and with the addition of an enabled device you can stream a plethora of titles immediately to your TV with no additional cost. My shipping times are Speed Racer quick. If I mail disc one of CSI on a Monday, I’ll have disc two on Wednesday. At the three titles at a time level, I can have a new disc or discs to feed my habit every single day. I also find their suggestions based on my activity and ratings to be spot on. Netflix is clean in appearance and user friendly, with my one complaint being that they changed how they list new releases a while back and it is often difficult to navigate to and incomplete.
I joined Blockbuster last week for a comparison and so far, so what. Shipping times are equal, but the turnaround on their end seems to lag. I will say they have a more refined ratings system that let’s me give half stars to discs. Blockbuster does not charge extra for Blu-ray and actually still offers some titles in HD-DVD for all you who bet the wrong pony. Netflix is $4 extra for Blu-ray, but cheaper to start.
Blockbuster also offers “exclusive rentals.” Exciting, eh? Well, the first thing I noticed about these discs is I’ve rented most of them from Netflix already. When I contacted Blockbuster Customer Care about their “exclusive” program, Ian wrote, “…the movies that you saw listed as exclusive rentals means that we are the only ones offering these films for rental.” Really? I find blatant puffery off-putting and Blockbuster’s site is filled with it.
The real back breaker is the non disc formats available. Netflix offers a “play now” feature on over half their titles at no additional charge. For TV shows, this is a great feature and I know plenty of people who use it to catch up during lunch breaks, etc. I even saw a Comcast guy eating lunch in his truck watching a show on his laptop the other day! Blcokbuster touts “no monthly fee” for their On Demand service (TiVo compatible), but if you scroll down you see they actually charge upwards of $2.99 extra per title to view content. There goes that Blu-ray included advantage. They also have a cryptic FAQ about why they don’t allow Macs to watch on demand. Netflix is Apple friendly these days.
They basically operate the same, but I can’t see enough from Blockbuster to convince me to switch. I’ve grown accustomed to Netflix and in the area of problem solving, they’ve been absolutely awesome. I even got a bonus disc mailed to me recently because the title at the top of my queue had been listed as “very long wait” for so long. When the mailman has snagged my discs, they’ve sent new ones within hours of my reporting it. I do greatly prefer the complete listings of new releases Blockbuster gives to me (as well as their more defined categories), but as a Real TV Addict, I pretty much know what I’m looking to add to my queue anyway.
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