Because we are queen of media, and because our local video shop sucks arse, I am considering an online DVD ordering arrangement. It’s terribly old school – DVDs coming in the mail. Just like ordering seeds from a catalogue (my favourite thing ever), and I guess as soon as the internet becomes a superhighway rather than a single lane (covered) central Queensland highway it’ll be superseded by downloads. But for now, it’s about the most exciting thing I can imagine.
So does anyone use any of these things? We’ve looked atquicklix and bigpond, but quickflix is winning at the moment. Once you get to the $36 per month plan, you get unlimited DVDs per month, 3, 4 or 5 at a time. It’s a bit cheaper on Bigpond (especially as we have a Telstra phone account for our internet), but Bigpond don’t do the unlimited DVDs and they have some slightly dodgy small print. Both offer free trials.
I’m not sure which account we should get. I’m a massive DVD renter, so I think there’s definitely the potential for unlimited DVDs. When we had a halfway decent DVD shop, I’d get DVDs out every other day – 2 and 3 at a time. So we’re looking at a family who’d hire about 10 DVDs a week, possibly 5, and that’s about 20 a month. That’s $46 on Bigpond or $36 on quickflix. The issue would be how many you can have at a time – only 3? Would 4 be better? It’d depend on your turn around time and how good you were at putting them in the mail. We’re weak on returning DVDs round here.
And you have to keep 20 DVDs in your list to be hired on quickflix. There are no overdue fees, but you are paying for the service, monthly, so you’re losing money if you don’t return DVDs.
… I guess we’d take advantage of the films (especially the older, harder to get arty ones and others that I think of as ‘weeklies’ – musicals, classics, foreign, etc), and would really benefit from the telly. It’s easier to get through multiple discs of a telly show than multiple movies, because you watch them in 30 minute, 45 minute and 1 hour blocks, rather than committing to one and a half hours at a time. That’s good for me because I like to watch an episode of something over lunch, to take a break from work.
So, does anyone use any of these services? Which? What’s good about them?
Since you’re going through such a high number of DVDs, I’m guessing that you’re not really into all the extras crap? If so, would some sort of movie download on demand service work for you?
Your ISP might have a deal where these downloads wont be included in your download quota. iiNet with Anytime used to do this.
http://www.anytimeondemand.com/index.html
I’m actually a big fan of extras. It drives The Squeeze mad because I’ll happily watch a film again with voice over stuff, and spend hours watching the docos and extras. I’ll check out the anytime people – ta for that.
I’m also not sure our internet could take the demands of downloading films. We download a lot of stuff (mostly The Squeeze getting jiggy with shareware, doing stuff for work, etc etc) , so I’m not sure that we’d have enough connection to share for movies… I’m also pretty sure I’d rather just hire it, get it in the mail the next day, then send it off when I’m done. I’m not all that keen on watching films on the computer. I’ll watch telly in bed now and then, using a computer, but I like sitting in the sitting room with all my crafty bits laid out around me… But I’ll look into it.
I just signed up for BigPond, but then I’m not such an avid DVD person as yourself. I’ll be quite happy with the three per month I think I’ve signed up for. Sorry, no help really. I guess I was enticed by the discounted price offered to BigPond Broadband customers, which I’ve also recently signed up for. The first 10 freebies are going to be used for thesis related viewing.
I am no help because I did this when this service first came to Australia, and you could only get unlimited movies, I think 3 at a time, and it was about $20. I think it was fetchmemovies, which then sunk without trace and popped up again later as BigPond Movies. 3 movies at a time was OK, but not sure how multiple discs for TV serieseses would go — do they give them to you in the correct order?