Netflix Review

When Netflix first started in 1998, the idea of renting videos by mail seemed unnatural.   Besides, how could a company make it cheap enough for consumers to use AND possibly make a profit.

Back in 1998, Blockbuster was crushing the small ma and pa video rental stores by moving into neighborhoods offering 1 dollar video rental coupons for months at a time.. or until the smaller video stores went out of business.  Then they would raise their prices, and charge late fees.  Blockbuster refused to carry both unrated AND NC 17 films.    Some of these un-rated films included classic films as well as foreign movies and documentaries.    And there was more.  Remember the late fees?  The punative late fees.  The odd ways they counted days and times of what 2 day and 3 day rentals actually meant?   Late fees. There were lawsuits about these late fees.     

Movie lovers and buffs signed on with Netflix almost right away.  ANYTHING was better than BLOCKBUSTER.  Convenience, no late fees, do everything by computer and mail and if you worked it right, you could wind up renting more than 16 movies a month for less than a $1.25 per disc.

Still can.

The selection was huge.   If you knew the new movies came out on Tuesdays and had the brand new ones at the top of your Que (waiting list) and returned a couple movies on Saturday...  chances are you'd get one of the brand new releases by Thursday....

If you ever had a problem with a movie....it was scratched, or a disc got broken, you could click a few buttons on your computer, tell Netflix you had a problem and even before you sent the bad disc in, a new movie would be on its way to you.

There were glitches and problems particularly in the old days and even now not everything works perfectly.   Sometimes the movie you want is tough to get.  Sometimes, a couple of movies at the top of your que (waiting list) that aren't available, cause the system to wait an extra day or two to see if the movie becomes available.  In the meantime you get no movies for a couple of days.  If you see a movie isn't available, you can move it down one or two in your list so you don't have 5 or 6 not available movies creating delays.

Oh and if you only wind-up renting 1 or 2 new movies a week, Netflix probably isn't going to save money--but you might still consider it very convenient.  You use your computer and mailbox, rather than  your car and video store.   If you keep the movie several weeks, that is okay.. no late fee.   If you lose a movie. . . chances are you'll be forgiven and not have to pay for it --but don't make a habit of doing it. You could also use a plan that costs 10 bucks a month.

There's a few competitors for Netflix, quirky indies like Green Cinema and there's Walmart too.

And then there is Blockbuster which jumped into the game a couple of years ago and flooded the air-waves with commercials like it was 1999 all over again.    I did a free trial with Blockbuster and found I rarely got the movies I most wanted--even if I went to the store to try to do it that way.   I had the same movies on both my Netflix and Blockbuster waiting lists.. and only once did I get one of the top four on my Blockbuster list, while I got 3 out of 4 on my Netflix list several weeks in a row.

I won't pretend I was not extremely biased against Blockbuster -- I hate-'em.  I believe they should have been fined and shut down for many of the predatory business practices they engaged in against competitors in the late 80's through the 90's... but that's another story.

Is Netflix perfect.  Nope.  

If you rent 8 or more movies per month, Netflix is the way to go.  It may take you a few months to learn how to make it work for you so that you can get many of the new movies you want pretty close to the day they come out-- but it's possible and pretty easy to do this.

You'll also find lots of small and independent and art-house films, classics and documentaries.  

Renting television series can be a little tricky since if a set has  4 or 6 discs, you have to set it up in your waiting list correctly and hope you can disc in the right order, when you want them.  Often you can... but you have to be proactive and persistent sometimes to make sure you things lined up correctly on your waiting list.    With Netflix each disc you request counts seperately.  So a 4 disc set would count as 4 discs.  

If you aren't a Netflix customer, what I mean is that you pay a set fee every month like say 17.99 per month which allows you to have 3 discs out at a time.   You return a disc, you get another disc.  You can rent 3 discs per week, or maybe even 6 discs per week (but you have to be watching a movie or two every night... and you still pay the same 17.99 per month.

If you wind up renting 15 discs one month,  10 discs another month, and you go on vacation for three weeks and only rent 4 discs in another month, you still pay the 17.99 per month.

You can add more discs for a few dollars per month, so if you want to be able to have 4 or 5 or even 6 discs out at a time, you can do that.

You have about 75,000 movies at any given time to choose from.  There are no XXX adult films, but you can rent unrated and NC17 movies.   (Don't worry parents can block rentals of Unrated and NC17 movies if needed).

Sometimes they have free trials, but you'll have to discontinue them at the right time or you'll wind up paying for a month. 

The Netflix site offers lot of information from movie clips and trailers to reviews by both professional critics and renters just like you.  You can tell the computer how you rate certain movies and based on  your choices and rating of movies you can get suggestions of movies you may wind up liking as much as other movies.

If you are a casual movie fan, Netflix may not make any sense to you, but for the rest of us, it's a pretty good deal.

I've used em for 8 years and seen glitches and problems occur and get solved pretty quickly and efficiently.  The very few problems I have had were solved quickly.