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DVDs By Mail?

Posted by Cliff on from the DVD-rental-from-the-comfort-of-your-couch dept.

scubacuda asks: "DVD mail rentals are hot right now. Netflix, perhaps the most popular one, costs only $19/month (with free shipping). Since then, a whole new batch of similar DVD rental services have cropped up. What do Slashdot readers look for? Which ones are most reliable, have the best selections, provide free shipping and makes the best movie suggestions?"

2 of 75 comments (clear)

  1. From a few months ago by The+Donald · · Score: 3, Insightful
    I used Netflix a few months ago, and I had no large complaints with the service: great selection, never out of stock. But I felt I could get a better value by going to a movie store and renting there.

    I liked the idea of as many DVD's as you want for $20/month", but I never felt I could watch enough DVD's to get my $20 worth. If I didn't watch about 6 in a month (Blockuster chaged about $4 per DVD), then it would be cheeper to rent at a video store. Plus, there are all the times where didn't have the time/desire/money to watch a movie; but I still paid for the right to rent them from Netflix. For the most part, when I rent DVD's; I'm hanging out with friends, and decide I'm gonna watch a movie a few hours before I do. It's damn impossable to get a DVD by mail the same day.

    Granted, the selection was great, but I couldn't justify the cost in my mind. Since I rent only 1~3 DVD's a month.

    --
    You know who I think is crazy? All my ex-girlfriends!
  2. Mixed Experiences by x4a4544 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I've been waiting around for my job to start for the past six months, so I've gone on a dvd renting spree. I have tried NetFlix.com, NumberSlate.com, and DVDBarn.com.

    I started out with NetFlix and have had good experiences with them. However, I started getting into anime and NetFlix only had partial sets of various anime series. So, I went to other services to look for the remaining disks, in this case it was just Gundam Wing, but later others came into the fray.

    I tried DVD Barn. They purported to have loads of DVDs, but once you signed up for an account you saw that nearly all of them were unavailable, and after 1.5 months on my queue there was no progress.

    Then I tried NumberSlate, like DVD Barn it seems that they have a lot of titles. The few that I was interested in were out but having only subscribed to them for 1 month I have seen a few of the unavailable titles get to my door.

    To sum this up ... DVD Barn sucks, Netflix and NumberSlate are decent.