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A bit off-topic for our american friends, but any Canadian care to comment about the quality and speed of the service from ZIP.ca?

I quick Google search comes up with Zip.ca: http://www.zip.ca/dvd/index.aspx

We don't have Netflix in Canada, but we do have Zip.ca which does home delivery of rental DVDs http://www.zip.ca/.

We've got http://zip.ca/. Pretty much the same thing.

We hav Zip.ca up here in Canada. It's kind of interesting to hear about this because I have a different approach to how I do things, and Zip's somewhat *ahem* silly queing system does have an option to make it useful: Park.

What I do is arrange on my active "Can send" list (Normal priority in Zip speak) the stuff I know I would watch, and then use ASAP priority to move up things I definitely will watch if I receive it. Anything else I feel I wouldn't watch, I send to the Parking lot (Park priotiy).

Arbitrarily ranking the queue (which I understand Netflix allows) is handy if you know you're going to watch things, but maybe they need to ask the user: I REALLY want to watch this, I wouldn't mind watching this, and "Eh, a friend told me i should watch it".

I would like to use an online rental service like Netflix (more specifically, their Canadian equiv. zip.ca) instead of Blockbuster, but I don't want to be locked in with their subscription model.

If they would introduce some kind of pay-as-you-go scheme, that would be ideal. I don't want to pay the monthly fee as in any given month I may only rent one movie -- or none at all.

boxlight

I thought I'd take a look at Zip out of curiosity, since it's the same business model too. I think they used the same models on the front page as Intelliflix. lol.

I am a http://zip.ca/ subscriber, and about a month ago received notification of a rent-volume-cap, wherein anything over a certain number of rentals per month (in my case, at the 4-DVD level, the cap is set at 11) gets billed a surcharge (don't quite remember now, but I beleive it was around $2.50-3.00)

It kind of ticked me off, until I realized that, in the half-year or so that we've been members, we've only once hit, never mind passed, the cap-point.

Seems that there are some heavy users in the dvd-mailout business cutting too heavily into the profit margins, eh?

Nice to see a Canadian corporation lead the way once again ;-)))

ok, this is slashdot, not greenpeace, but why do you have to scroll 15 pages before seeing the first post about the environmental concerns of that idea ? Hey, let's make slashdot a place where geeks, while being excited for technology, keep in mind some boring facts, like the default behavior of industry is to thing 6 month ahead.

btw, why not go for options where you rent the dvd, receive and send it back by mail for free ? http://www.zip.ca/

Try http://zip.ca/ Those I know who use it are fairly happy with it.

I'm using Zip.ca, a service identical to Netflix (who dosen't deliver into Canada), and the service is really cool. They've got a huge selection of movies - 30,000 or so, I've been able to satisfy my finical tastes - and there's no late fees, something I was having a problem with before. You build up a queue of 20 or so movies you'd like to see, and they mail you what's available from that list. It's kinda cool because you never know what kind of mix you'll get: I got the comedy "I'm gonna git you sucka", a documentary on deep sea aquatic life and the anime "Grave of the Fireflies"

I highly recommend the service (it's better than the trash on Satellite IMO).

Interesting, I've been trying to figure out if Zip.ca (Canadian company similar to Netflix) has been doing this. First month I returned a disc, they got it next day and sent out mine, I got it the following day. Second month was just as fast. Third month I went through some quicker and now it's taking an extra 2 days per shipment from them upon receiving my discs.