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RSS feedsThere was a time when you weren't able to walk 10 yards down your local high street without coming across a video rental outlet or six. But now, with the onset of DVD and the attendant retail boom, the local rental store isn't nearly as popular as it used to be. And when you do find one, it tends to have hundreds of copies of the latest releases but little in the way of real choice.
Turn to the web, however, and you'll find that the rental market is alive and kicking, thanks to a bunch of enterprising websites offering DVDs for rental. Most of them offer a huge range of new releases and back catalogue titles. And, even better, they're delivered straight to your door.
Online movie rental is by no means a new concept. Movietrak, one of the first sites to offer this service, has been going since December 1999. But the market has grown, and there are several companies to choose from all with their own range of titles, price deals and options.
All of the sites we have looked at offer a 14-day free trial membership and allow you to rent as many DVDs as you want for a set monthly subscription fee, although you're only allowed a certain number of discs at any one time.
They also allow customers to borrow discs for as long as they want without charging late-return fees, and supply pre-paid envelopes for easy return of each DVD.
Naturally, value for money was a top priority when it came to comparing the different services, but we were also looking for ease of use, speed of delivery, availability, variety of titles and quality of customer service.
Screen Select
www.screenselect.co.uk
Screen Select describes itself as "the easiest way to rent DVDs", and it certainly lives up to that promise. There are four levels of membership, from £11.99 a month, which entitles you to two DVDs at a time, to £26.99 a month for five titles. If you cancel your membership, you'll have seven days to send back any discs you still have.
After signing up for the 14-day free trial via the secure registration system, we were able to start selecting DVDs for rental straight away. The site, which offers a selection of more than 18,500 titles, is particularly insistent that you have at least 10 titles in your Selection list at all times, so that if one title is unavailable they can send you another of your choices - and it's a rule they're keen to enforce.
As a consequence we received several emails ordering us to add DVDs to our list. That said, it's simple to use, and the service is very efficient; the first of our chosen DVDs, Roger Dodger, arrived just two days after signing up.
The service also scored points for dispatching more than one DVD at a time; a steady stream of discs popped through the mailbox over the following week. One thing to bear in mind, however, is that only one disc is dispatched per envelope, so if you want to rent something like a Simpsons box set, don't expect to get all the individual DVDs at once.
The site is quick to recommend DVDs - which it lists under genre and in an area called Featured Collections (everything from Critics Choices to Channel 4 picks) - and forthcoming releases can be ordered in advance. What's more, if you're looking for something a bit more obscure than the latest blockbuster, you can use the Selection Suggestion Form to let them know what you're after.
Qflicks
www.qflicks.com
Quite aside from its claim to be the biggest online rental resource around (it aims to have 20,000 titles available by the end of 2004), Qflicks attempts to distinguish itself from the competition with its "personalisation technology" - in other words, recommending titles that are intended to suit the customer based on their personal taste and previous preferences.
Once again, we signed up for the free two-week trial membership (although, if you're wanting something more permanent, standard membership is £19.99 a month) and, after giving over all the usual personal details on the site's secure system, we were prompted to name our favourite film genre and actor in order for the system to recommend movies that might be of interest.
The rental list itself works in much the same way as the others: simply choose your titles in order of preference and Qflicks will do the rest. Again, service was speedy and, in this case, our top choice (Secretary) arrived two days later, following an email to confirm that the disc was on its way. Two further titles appeared shortly afterwards. Should you cancel your membership you have seven days to return any outstanding DVDs.
Beyond the personal recommendations, it's also pretty easy to browse through other selections on Qflicks, as everything is broken down into genres. Like Screen Select there are also featured collections, which, in this case, include 1970s movies, British films, family films and summer blockbusters.
Lovefilm
www.lovefilm.com
At first glance, Lovefilm appears to be aimed more at the serious film buff rather than the casual fan. The fact that homepage recommendations included the likes of French documentary Etre et Avoir and Oscar-nominated animation Belleville Rendezvous when we visited, suggest it's trying to target discerning tastes. That said, there are 16,000 titles available, so getting a copy of the latest blockbuster won't be much of a problem.
Free trial membership is available via the site's secure registration process, while fully paid-up membership starts at £9.99 a month for Bronze status (one film out at a time), through to £14.99 for Silver (two films), and £19.99 for gold (three films). As with the other services, there are no late fees or restrictions on how long you can keep the DVDs.
The process of making a rental list is quick and simple, and again one of our top five choices, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind arrived a couple of days later. It's worth noting that if you opt for the free trial membership here, you're automatically put on bronze status, which means you'll only get one DVD at a time, even as other companies are cheerfully cluttering up your postbox with three or four.
Like Webflix, there's no email to let you know that a title is on its way, either. But when it came to cancelling the membership, the company couldn't do enough for us, offering another free two-week trial and practically begging us to stay before finally giving in.
Still, delivery was quick, the site itself is simple to use and it scores points for acknowledging that there is (thankfully) a world of film beyond The Matrix Reloaded.
Movietrak
www.movietrak.co.uk
As we mentioned before, Movietrak was one of the first DVD rental services to appear online in the UK. It also happens to be the only site we tested that offers both a subscription and a pay-as-you-go service, allowing the user to rent titles for £3.25 each and keep them for up to seven days. If you want to become a member, however, it's £13.95 per month for unlimited rentals.
You're limited to two films at any one time but, compared to some of the other sites, it's still good value. Once again, registration is secure and easy and the service works in much the same way as other sites: create a list of titles you want to see and the site will begin sending them to you as and when they are available.
Movietrak proved to be the quickest of the lot when it came to sending out the titles. Our copy of Pirates Of The Caribbean was with us just 24 hours after signing up, while a second film, Underworld, followed a few days later.
There's no indication of how many titles are available through the service (the site simply says it has 'thousands' on offer) and the actual selection process is less detailed than on other sites. Nevertheless, experience seems to have served Movietrak well. The pay-as-you-go option gives it more appeal to casual users, for example, while it has also cottoned on to the potentially lucrative practice of selling off ex-rental titles for a fraction of their original price.
What's more, the design is clean and simple and very user-friendly. If you're planning to cancel your membership, though, you should bear in mind that you have to return any outstanding discs before actually cancelling. The site does not offer a grace period to return your rentals.
Webflix
webflix.co.uk
"Here at Webflix we live, eat and sleep movies," claim the people behind this particular online rental site, and the comment is further backed by a huge list of favourable comments from the site's users. Sadly, such self-promotion does little to hide some of the site's most obvious flaws.
It's certainly easy enough to use and, with membership plans that range from £9.95 a month (one DVD at a time) through to £17.95 a month (for three DVDs), it's certainly among the cheaper sites we tested. Registration is a simple and secure process, and the site works in much the same way as the others: pick 10 movies and they will dispatch the first available on your list to you. A copy of Identity, fourth on our list, arrived within two days.
So far, so good. But there are a couple of obvious problems with Webflix. The first is the site's design, which is too boxy and clumsy to navigate. But the site really shoots itself in the foot with the synopses of the films on offer.
Underworld, for example, is criticised severely in the site's blurb and, while some might argue that it's honest to describe the Kate Beckinsale vampire versus werewolf film as "tedious and derivative", it seems only counter-productive to slate titles to this degree when the point of the service is to get people to rent them. Finally, with only 5,000 titles available, Webflix is not as comprehensive as some of its competitors.
Conclusion
All the sites tested have their merits, and ultimately it depends on what users are looking for in an online rental outlet. Lovefilm is a cheap and cheerful option with a good range of alternative titles and big blockbusters, while Movietrak's extended range of services makes it appeal to both the seasoned DVD renter and the casual movie viewer. However, for all-round ease of use and quality of services, Qflicks emerges as the champion of the online rental market, largely because it offers top-quality service in all areas, from choice of titles through to customer service.
Online movie shopping
While renting movies is a cheap and easy way to catch up with films old and new, many of us like to purchase copies of our silver screen favourites so that we can watch them over and over again. But before you part with your hard-earned cash down at your local high street shop, a visit to some of the many online DVD retailers could save you a lot of money and time.
As with music and books, there are some great deals to be had, with sites such as Amazon and CDWOW often far cheaper and more convenient than a trip to the shops. Postage is often free (depending on the total cost of your order, in Amazon's case) and most orders are delivered to your front door within a few days.
If you're looking for great deals online, one of the best places to start is DVD Price Check which compares prices on titles across a huge range of online retailers from all countries and regions.
If you're a real movie buff and are concerned about getting the best version of a particular title, you might want to visit Rewind, which compares different releases from around the world and lets you know which one is best (best transfer/print, most extra features, and so on).
Recent action on behalf of the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) has forced sites such as CD-WOW to stop selling import CDs at low prices. The same sort of thing is unlikely to happen with imported movie discs, however, since DVDs are encoded to specific territories.
Remember, however, this means that discs from abroad might not work in your DVD player. DVDs ordered from the US (known as Region 1 discs) are encoded differently to those in the UK and will only work on either US DVD players or those with multi-region capability.
It's also worth bearing in mind that, if you shop from abroad, packages that come from outside the EU valued at more than £18 are liable to incur import tax plus a handling fee, bumping up the cost somewhat. The easiest way to avoid these levies is to make sure your order is below £18. Visit the Customs & Excise website for more details on how and when you're likely to be charged.
Downloading movies
Faster internet access and increasingly broader bandwidth mean that it will one day be possible to cut out the postal service altogether by downloading the movies you rent directly from the web and watching them straight away.
There are already illegal methods of downloading movies from the web (see below), but it should be fairly simple to implement a legitimate system of authorised on-demand video delivery, which would not only allow viewers to watch what they want when they want it, but could also potentially save film studios a lot of cash in distribution costs.
In fact, some services, such as Movielink, already allow films to be downloaded online, but so far these systems are only available in the US. In the UK, on-demand video is being pioneered by HomeChoice. Although only available in London at the moment, HomeChoice (which uses ADSL technology to deliver movies straight to your TV) has plans to extend its service to other areas of the UK.
With advances in technology and cheaper connections, there are likely to be several more companies offering this kind of service in the future. A big deciding factor in the success of on-demand video downloads will undoubtedly be the convergence of PCs and home entertainment systems, as is beginning to happen with technology such as Microsoft's Windows XP Media Centre Edition.
See also:
Still reading those old paperbacks? Dip into the huge online world of electronic books and discover the benefits of digital text 17 Sep 2004
There are many advantages to buying online. Whether you're new to the net or a seasoned web shopper, we can help you find the best shops and save money too 08 Jul 2004All Online
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