Home Entertainment: Is Online Dvd Movie Rental Right For You?

When shopping for an online movie rental service, you need to choose the service you want to go with.There are a couple notables out there, so do price comparisons and decide for yourself which one suits you.What they all generally have in common is that you can have out up to three movies at a time, all the time, you pay a monthly flat fee for the service (about the cost of three cable pay-per-view movies) and have no limits on how many movies you can see in a month.There are no late fees.

After you choose your company and sign up, you are invited to browse their available movies,(some of them boast more than 25,000 titles), including new releases and movies about to be released, and set up a queue, a list of movies you would like to see.You can change the order you want to see them in, delete them, and generally arrange the list however you would like to.You can change it at any time.

Then the provider will select the first three available DVD's on your list and mail them to you, postage paid.Often, you receive them the very next day, or the day after.Note that some services do not ship on Sundays.

Once you have them, its very simple.You watch a movie, and when you are done with it, tuck it into the pre-paid envelope the company sends you with the DVD, and put it in your nearest mailbox.As soon as the company gets it back, they send out the next one on your list.

Sounds great, doesn't it?It is, if you have constant access to the internet.If you do not have your own computer with internet access, this service may be problematic for you, because the service relies on you to set up a list of movies you want to see, and if you cannot get online to tell them what you want to see, they cannot send you anything.

Now, some people prefer the tactile experience of going into the movie store, walking the aisles and making their choices.So, this is a potential downside to online rental.However, you can still stalk the aisles of your video store and use an online service, you just need to repurpose your browsing to buy, not rent, mode.Some movie stores offer a similar program, where you pay a monthly fee and rent as many movies as you want with no late fees, but the fee is generally higher than an online service, and limited to maybe two movies at a time, rather than three.Not to mention the fact you have to drive or walk to and from the video store to get your movies.

Pay-per-view movies are great-you hit a button on your remote and its right there.But you pay a premium for armchair service, not to mention the fact that in some cases you have to have digital cable in order to even have these movies at your disposal.And they certainly do not have 25,000 movies available every day, at any time. In general, this is a far more costly option than the online DVD rental option.

The drawbacks to online movie rental are few.The primary drawback is you can only rent DVD's.You cannot rent VHS.The other drawback is if your internet goes out, you cannot manage your queue until you have internet access again.However, the movies will keep coming as long as you have a queue for them to pull from.And the final drawback is that you'll have to check your mail more often because your movies will be there waiting for you!