Comments on: DVD by mail showdown: Netflix versus Blockbuster. There is a clear winner.

By: meanderingmedia

meanderingmedia — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 01:17:28 +0000

On the contrary, the screen shots say everything - look again:
(1.) If I received 31 DVDs in one month, it contradicts your point about 27 being a reach.
(2.) The Blockbuster At Home queue shows empty slots that often go unfilled for days at a time. That's my money they're sitting on.

BTW, there's literally no discernible difference between watching a full 1080p movie on a small device like an iPad and watching one at 480i DVD interpolated. The human eye can't discern lines that small, it's scientifically proven.

The one comment you made that is totally supportable is Blu Ray, though. It's a great value - if Blockbuster gets on the ball and routinely sends queued requests daily - to get Blu Ray for the same price as Netflix's straight DVD offerings.

Sorry to hear you didn't have a good experience with the other guys. Competition's good, and as a result I'd love to see Blockbuster become more user friendly, responsive, and open six days to receive (and send back) movies from my list. If that were to happen I'd be the first to quit Netflix and proclaim Blockbuster the new movie delivery champ.

Enjoy!

By: wussel

wussel — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 00:50:13 +0000

I am sorry, but the screen shots are not showing anything – it could be everything. Stay with Netflix, but I switched to Blockbuster due to Blue Ray, new releases and the service is better than Netflix (like you haid a bad experience with Blockbuster I had it with Netflix).

I watch a new movie on my Blue Ray player right now. Have fun watching an old movie in low quality on your iPad.

By: meanderingmedia

meanderingmedia — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 18:48:32 +0000

wussel - take a look at this screen capture of the rentals Netflix sent me in April: http://twitpic.com/1t0ome - I count 31 DVD rentals for the month of April, so I'm guessing from your comments you've seen Bigfoot at 7Eleven already.

As for Blockbuster, check this out: http://twitpic.com/1t0pf2 - see that At Home queue? What's missing? MOVIES! Yes, that's right: I have two open spots in my At Home queue despite having plenty of available movies. This doesn't just look this way for a few hours while new movies get processed. It routinely happens for a couple days or more. My favorite was recently when I had a Shawn Colvin concert in my queue listed as Available, yet despite being at the top of my queue or the only DVD in it, the DVD never got sent.

I gave up and put it at the top of my Netflix queue and received it the very next day.

You can have three or three hundred movies in the In Your Queue window (as you can see) and yet Blockbuster won't process them timely. I spent this past holiday weekend with one open slot and five movies listed as Available in my queue. Not only that, Blockbuster doesn't show up for work on Saturday to process what I sent Friday while Netflix does: that's one additional day every week!

Sorry you've had the experiences you've had but - other than Netflix's tendency to drop frequent New Release requesters lower in the queue when high demand new movies arrive, Blockbuster's just plain uncompetitive. The queue stays half empty, the search function sucks, you can't tell what format movie you'll receive (WS/FS), you can't do any form of partial word search for movies, you can't drag/drop movies in your queue, and the availability information is often completely false. Just one of these things would bother me, but all of them together - well, that REALLY bothers me.

Now if all you do is stock your queue with new movies and you really don't care about being able to rotate movies in and out of your house 6 out of 7 days with immediate turnaround, I can see why you might like Blockbuster. Their service has proven to be accommodating for people who just want brand new movies, and their generally lethargic approach to refilling the At Home queue wouldn't bother the customer who doesn't want to take full advantage of an unlimited 3 at a time plan.

And that's exactly what I said in the post: Netflix is a far better deal. More prompt, easier to use, more innovative.

Now I hope you don't mind while I go watch a movie on my iPad using the Netflix Instant Watch app... ;-)

Cheers!

By: wussel

wussel — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 18:07:14 +0000

Blockbuster has the same turnaround time or even better than Netflix, because they are marking the movies as returned when they are scanned at postal service. At Netflix you have to wait longer and longer for new movies the longer you are a member. Show me the 27 DVD rentals a month with Netflix – more likely that you meet Big Foot at 7Eleven.