Renting movies online is increasing in popularity, but it’s still a temporary, imperfect solution. Until such a time that technology catches up with the far-reaching promises that we were told years ago (that’s right, I am referring to instant movies via the ubiquitous broadband promise), we’re going to see greater and greater demand for online movie rentals. 

So for those who are now making the decision to try an online rental house, or for those who are considering changing services, here are a few factors that you should consider in making your decision:

• Distribution Centers: for added convenience, you will want to ensure that your movie service has a distribution center near you. This can make the difference between a 1 to 2 day turnaround, and a three to four day turnaround. This consistent turnaround time will become important to you as a user of the service so that you can plan your returns and rentals around typical viewing nights.
• DVD Inventory: the breadth of movie selection is obviously important. Many movie watchers are primarily interested in current releases, but you might also want to consider what the inventory of TV series, classics, and movies from the past two decades is like You might be surprised to find yourself turning off cable because you can rent all of the best series from network television, Showtime, HBO, and more.
• DVD Availability: a huge library of movies does you no good if your DVD rental house only has one copy of each! This figure will probably never be disclosed, but for the most part, the bigger the service, the deeper their inventory. In this area, Netflix is generally considered to outrank Blockbuster.
• Ratings and Other Information: being able to view what others think about a movie is important to help you narrow down your selection. Ideally, your service will be able to learn from your movie selections and soon be able to suggest movies to you with some degree of accuracy.
• Usability: as you build your rental queue and look for movies to rent, you will begin to appreciate more and more how easy a web site is to use. Looking at things like site response times, the ability to search on multiple criteria, overall site availability, information in areas like mouseover boxes, navigability, etc. will have a tremendous impact on your overall satisfaction. I personally find this one of the top three factors to easily rent movies.
• Specialized Features: each service will have characteristics that make it unique from the other services. For example, Netflix has a very convenient instant movie section. The movie selection isn’t great, but being able to watch movies on your PC on demand is very convenient. Similarly, the ability to walk into a local store to return movies or rent new ones, as you get with the Blockbuster service, are also very important to some.

When you campare all of the characteristics, there are really on two practical choices for a rental house, and those are Blockbuster and Netflix. To look at how each of these rental services up with the other, and to see which one will fit you best, check out this Blockbuster and Netflix comparison. It stacks the rental services up side-by-side, and can help make your decision much easier.

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