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+5? Good god. What are the mods smoking? Even though NetFlix is sort of cool- I used to be a member, but have moved on to "greener" pastures- and they did have a good idea, why should this be patentable? Being able to patent "Do X, only on the internet" is about as stupid as can be. What if it had been possible to patent "Do X"? Would you all be happy if Blockbuster had a patent on movie rentals? Alamo on car rentals? Or, perhaps, Expedia on "Buying airline tickets... on the internet!" As others have said, unlimited-time-out rentals are not a new idea, either, so they really are doing this based of off "... on the internet".

So, I guess that means Netflix is crossed off my list. Does anyone have another DVD rental service to recommend? (assuming that this other company can survive despite the patent.)

I recently heard about GreenCine and they seem interesting. It's $21.95/month, but they have "over 10,000 titles, with an accent on indie, art house, classics, foreign, documentary, anime and Asian cinema."

I sought a second opinion and found this extensive review of DVD rental services at Stark Raving Normal. The guy seemed to like them: "GreenCine is my current favorite DVD rental service. The customer service people have been great, they have the best selection of anime that I have seen from a DVD rental place, lots of cult movies, sci-fi, horror, indie films, foreign cinema, and even a cool little online community of San Francisco movie geeks."

I don't work for GreenCine, but they're probably towards the top of my list at the moment. And, it doesn't hurt either that some of their profits go to film arts organizations.

You'll be even more likely to find indie, art films, and classics at greencine.

I dropped my subscription to NetFlix sometime last year and replaced it with GreenCine, even though they were slightly more expensive and took longer to ship to me. Why? Selection.

I liked getting anime DVDs from Netflix, but the way they kept buying only the first two or three DVDs of a six- or eight-disc series annoyed the frick out of me. I found GreenCine after a short search at Yahoo, and the site promised a greater selection of independent and anime rentals -- and they were absolutely right.

My point is, the real advantage of the online rental market should be greater selection of eclectic titles. Have you ever shopped for movies at Wal-Mart? Mainstream stuff all the way. Their CD selection is even worse. I started buying books and CDs from Amazon.com not for the prices, but because their selection was that much better, even if I lost the advantage of immediate gratification.

If people want to rent mainstream videos, then they'll always do it at Blockbuster or Hollywood Video, where they're promised "guaranteed in stock" even if they only keep it for two nights. Immediacy is more important than "keep it as long as you like" in most consumers' minds; if it weren't, we wouldn't have movie channels on cable TV at all.

So kudos to Wal-Mart for entering a new arena (for them), and may NetFlix be driven to excel even more because of it. But until they both realize the real advantages of what they're doing and offer a wider and more complete selection, I'll happily ignore them both.

Out here in East Podunkistan we don't have a "boutique" video store. Hell, we don't even have a full size Blockbuster. Thank goodness for GreenCine.

Forget NetFlix and Walmart!!! Support your local videostores, or indie startups like

Greencine that give you other choices besides MPAA-approved Hollywood pablum!

...and now there are many. Something like this was inevitable given the growth of the on-line DVD rental industry. You had the trailblazer, then a few specialists started showing up, and now the big boys jump into the fray. It's how almost all new markets progress.

For those of us who like film, not just hit movies, Greencine is a great alternative.

I've been using them for about 2 months now, and it's been fantastic. They still stock "hit" titles, but their primary focus is on foreign, anime, independent, etc. It's $21.95 a month, rather than Netflix $20, but the selection is huge by comparison.

They're also very personable, and take suggestions very close to heart. They frequently try to find out of print DVDs to stock, if the demand is there, and based on what people *do* rent, they'll stock more copies to meet the demand more adequately.

Perhaps best of all, my comments of "hey, good job" and whatnot to their customer service people earned a response from one of their VP's. They're still fairly small (based in SF), and a portion of their revenue goes to local SF charities, so i suppose that's not too surprising..but it's still a really nice touch.

We had originally planned to go with Netflix, but when we found them, we nearly shit ourselves over the wide selection of stuff that Netflix and Blockbuster *don't* carry.

For those curious, a few of our recent rentals have included:

Babylon 5: Season 1
Shanghai Triad
The Element of Crime
Irma Vep
Dead Ringers

..and so on and so forth.

Anyway..a few of you might dig it as an alternative to Netflix/Blockbuster, particularly if you like non-mainstream and/or anime stuff.

.. and no, i don't work for them :p

Blockbuster has the most depressing selection of anime I've ever found. Hollywood Video has a slightly better selection, but it's still lacking. The greatest annoyance is when they buy the first two discs or tapes of a series like Neon Genesis Evangelion and never mind about the rest.

Even Netflix suffers this problem, and it's annoyed me enough to make me cancel my subscription in favor of GreenCine, another online DVD rental store that charges $2 more a month than Netflix but has an exponentially more complete anime collection. I've only used them a month and I'm already relying on them for my commercial- and edit-free anime fix.