How Does Online DVD Renting Work?

These sites are DVD rental stores that you visit online, but instead of paying 3…4…6 bucks per movie or game, you pay a set monthly fee and they will deliver several discs at a time, by mail, right to your doorstep.



As you watch your movies and play your games, they will keep sending you more as fast as you send them back. The number you can use in a month will only be limited by the time they spend in the mail and being used by you. They even give you pre-paid envelopes so you do not have to pay for postage.
One of the major advantages of these subscription services is that they have no late fees. If you like a movie or game and want it again next weekend, just keep it a little longer. No hassles, no calendar marking and no movie store hired bounty hunters coming to lead you away in handcuffs.

Please note that if you are an extremely high volume renter (IE >15 movies/month on the 3 disc plan), sites tend to decrease your priority for getting the very in-demand movies. Even though it says unlimited rentals, don’t expect to able to trade all your DVDs every day. This policy just makes it fair for the other customers, otherwise heavy renters would hog all the good titles and make the service more expensive for everyone by driving up the company’s shipping costs. You will still get DVDs delivered to your door for around a buck each and you can’t beat that anywhere else.

Back to top




Why should I rent online?



It is More Convenient: No more irritating trips to the movie store, because you can rent from the comfort of home or office. No due dates to worry about. A searchable database of titles saves you from having to spend 30 minutes pacing back and forth staring at racks to see what’s in stock. No waiting in line either!

It is Cheaper: No late fees, movies average $1.75 less per rental and you even save on gas. You only need to watch 1 movie a week on a 3 DVD plan for it to be competitive with store renting.

It has Unbeatable Selection: Ever spend an hour at the store searching, only to rent a lousy title because there was nothing better? We sure have. How often would this happen if you had 30,000+ to choose from?

No commitment: There is absolutely zero commitment when you join one of these plans. If you decide you want out on January 31st, then on February 1st you are out. No contracts, no hassles and no hidden fees.

A better product offering that is easier to use, cheaper, requires no commitment of any kind and even has a free trial? Instead of “Why should you try it?”, we would ask “Why SHOULDN’T you try it?”. So take a free trial and see for yourself that there IS a better way. What have you got to lose? It’s FREE!

If you are still not convinced, take look at the Interesting Facts section for hard evidence of just how happy online DVD rental customers are with their service. The facts don’t lie.

Back to top




How do I pick the best one for me?

Beware of whom you trust for a recommendation. Most of the “review” sites out there fall into 2 categories.
A – Sites thrown together in a few hours in someone’s basement that really only express their untested guess about which companies are better. Sometimes they guess right, but often not.
B – Purely for profit sites that rank companies based upon how much they pay the site’s owner per customer referred. There is never any real research that goes into those rankings. It is all just B.S.

Being consumers ourselves, we hated not being able to rely on the reviews out there. So we decided to make a site based on actual RESEARCH that would comprehensively compare and rank the top players in the online DVD renting industry.

We looked at hundreds of articles, the Better Business Bureau files, over 50 other review sites and then did actual trials of the various services. We can now say without a shred of a doubt, that we have THE MOST comprehensive analysis of online renting out there.

All the sites that have high rankings in our research results are good companies. They are ranked based upon the factors that appear in the Detailed Reviews: selection, service, site design, etc… High ranks = best bang for your buck. We have also left out dozens of scam sites and companies that are so lousy, they are not even worth your time to read about. If you pick from the top of our lists, you only need to worry about two things:

First, decide what kind of movies or games you are looking for. We have made three independent ranking lists for different types of DVD products: Mainstream Movies, Console Games and Adult Films. Once you know what you want, just look at the rankings to see who is best. Sometimes a company that fits in several categories will rank above one competitor in “Movies” but below the same competitor in “Games”. This is because one is better at movies and the other is better at games. In this case, decide which is type of DVD is more important to you and chose the one that ranks highest in that category.

Second, how is the shipping speed to your area? Clearly no one company can be the closest to every single home in the country. The company that ships the fastest to one person might ship the slowest to another. That is why we try to offer many different free trials. You can test several out and see which one works best for you. So remember to bookmark us before you leave.

The companies here are constantly adding new shipping locations to improve service. So it might be a good idea to give them a try even if a neighbor told you it was too slow a few months ago.

Back to top




Interesting Facts:

Did you know that the average brick and mortar Blockbuster Video and Hollywood Entertainment store brings in about $10,000 a MONTH in late fees? That's the equivalent of 667 months of paid online rentals! Talk about getting something for nothing (for them at least). Personally, we would rather put our money towards our online rental subscription than their late fees.

Independent research found that online rental subscribers rent twice as many movies per month as they did prior to joining.

That same research found that new subscribers are more satisfied with their home-entertainment experience after subscribing and that their satisfaction level generally rises the longer they stay with the service.

9 out of 10 of the people who join the free trials offered by online DVD rental sites are so satisfied with their experience that they decide to continue paying after the trial is over. There is no better proof that online renting is a better deal!

Back to top




Copyright (c) 2005