Online Movie Rentals

[Peadar]

Big business now with Amazon (http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/subs/rentals/help/learn-more.html/026-7475247-7054833), Blockbuster (http://www.blockbuster.co.uk/) etc. all offering an online DVD rental service.

I've signed up for the Dixons (http://www.screenselect.co.uk/visitor/home.html) one and I have to say the service so far has been great.
They send you a movie, you watch it, put in back in the envelope and send it back by freepost. When they get it, they send you out another one off your list.
Only negative I can think of is that if the movie you request is a 2 Disk set then they send them seperately and consider it 2 movies.
Need to confirm that though.
That would annoy me because I rarely watch the "bonus" material.

Anyone else have any experience with this type of service?

[paul_oshea]

aye.

its been in america for the last 4 years or so. usually most crowds would send you three at once, as its both cheaper for you and them. it works out though at the same price as just goin to your local rental shop, because by the time you have watched it sent it back and got another one its almost a week.

[Peadar]

usually most crowds would send you three at once, as its both cheaper for you and them.

That's not the case here.
The trial package that I've signed up for allows you to have 3 movies at home at once. They all arive individually and when you're finished with one, you just pop it in the post.
You can easily have a regular stream of movies coming in.

[Neish]

Which companies offer the service in Ireland? Tried to sign up for it in Amazon and they said the service is only avilable to UK customers, unless that has been changed in the last month or so

[dahamsta]

The service in the UK is really only a trial by Amazon, so they're not inclined to make the effort to roll it out to Ireland. If they do, it'll be more expensive because (obviously) of the higher postage costs. However it's all dependant on the route Amazon US takes, and that's really up in a heap at the moment, there's of them doing it on their own, buying Netflix, etc, etc.

dvdrentals.ie (http://www.dvdrentals.ie) is one, but there's at least one more, and I think probably two.

adam

[shedite]

I read about some type of paint that they can put on DVD's over here in the US which erodes the DVD over a few days. Basically they send it out to you, it works fine for the first few days, then starts skipping and then doesn't work altogether. Then you just dump the DVD and don't have to return it at all. Apparently there's no damage done to the DVD player.

[pete]

€20 a per month seems too expensive to me. Would have to guarantee using 4 movies a month to make that worth while. £8 per month in the uk is better.

Guy at work runs his own one for people at work. €5 a month & money spent on each months choices plus can take out any of the back catelog.

[dahamsta]

I read about some type of paint that they can put on DVD's over here in the US which erodes the DVD over a few days. Basically they send it out to you, it works fine for the first few days, then starts skipping and then doesn't work altogether. Then you just dump the DVD and don't have to return it at all. Apparently there's no damage done to the DVD player.The paint is just a stop-gap for testing, they'd be manufacturing them that way specifically for the rental market if they went ahead. It's a nice idea, but I don't like it for environmental reasons meself. We should be trying to cut down on disposables, not creating more of them.

adam /amateur tree hugger

[Peadar]

We should be trying to cut down on disposables, not creating more of them.

adam /amateur tree hugger

I'm confident that movies will go the same way as music with online downloads replacing disks.
People will stream movies to their TV's and PC's on demand.
This will be within the next 5 years.
The technology is there, it's the cost of client devices that prevents the technology being rolled out on a grand scale.