Anvil and Sprocket Movie Review

Update: Just a little over a month later, I’ve canceled my membership over a sudden and dramatic price increase — from $24.99 a month to $34.99 a month with no increase in service.

When I started this site in 2001, I just wanted to have some project that would justify the enormous amount of money and time I was spending on movie rentals as a Netflix customer. So I’ve been using mail rental services for a very, very long time. But I’ve not really been loyal to the Netflix brand — I just rent from there because they have the best selection and service. But a couple of weeks ago I made the decision to drop Netflix and go with Blockbuster Online for awhile. Not because of anything Netflix did, really. Just because I wanted to try out the competition.

This is the second time I’ve done this. When Blockbuster first launched their service I tried them and found them to be slow and their store integration to be poor and very confusing. Things have improved a lot since then, but Blockbuster’s service is still a little bumpy compared to Netflix.

Here’s the big advantage to the Blockbuster rental service. You can take mailed DVDs back into the store and exchange them for rental DVDs. That means when you’re on a movie tear you can turn things over quickly. Even better, if you get a DVD in the mail and watch five minutes of it, then decide you can’t take it any more, you can exchange it quickly at the shop. Assuming a participating Blockbuster is handy. Where we live now that is certainly the case.

The other big advantage is you get to pole around the shop but you don’t actually have to rely on it. One thing I missed with Netflix was going into a rental place and chatting with the rest of my rental’s audience about what pain we were going to subject ourselves to this time. Netflix’s interface encourages a sort of browsing, but it’s not nearly as effective as being able to take in a full rack of DVDs at once glance. Of course, once you had watched a lot of movies this got tiresome, but you now also have the option of returning the discs at the store and having them send you the next items in your queue almost immediately. So if you don’t find something for trade, you still get movies in the mail more quickly.

Blockbuster’s selection might not be as good. I don’t know, I haven’t started looking for the really obscure stuff. But the breadth of Netflix’s selection as decreased as well over the years I’ve been a member, so I just accept that there’s some stuff I’m going to have to hunt for.

Blockbuster has improved the store integration since I last tried, but it is not without quite a few technical glitches. I’ve exchanged DVDs in the store twice, and both times Blockbuster has shipped the disc in the top of the queue to me. So even though I’m on a three-at-a-time plan, I’ve had four discs for some time. You also have to set a preference hidden in their not-particularly-good site to get them to remove items from your mail queue if you grab them at the store. I set this, but still somehow ended up with getting a store copy and a mailed copy of Jaws. Also, Blockbuster’s pricing scheme for this service seems to require a great deal of explanation. Different membership levels allow you to exchange a different number of movies every month, but according to the store clerk where I registered she has a problem with people not realizing there’s a cap on their service. More explanation isn’t going to fix this; a simpler pricing structure is.

Overall, though, I’ve been pretty happy with the Blockbuster experience. And it’s been a very long time since I said something like that. If a Blockbuster is handy to you, it might be worth giving them a try.