I’ve never bothered getting a movie from my local library, but just looking at their website I can say that it’s definitely a little more involved than that. I can’t just “Put on Hold” and have the entire region’s library system put every copy of the movie on hold (which is what would be happening if I could just put it on hold and then pick it up at any random branch I felt like), so I would have to either reserve at a specific branch or get it moved to my local branch. Either of these take time, either shipping to my local branch or me driving to a branch further away. Around here almost everything is going to be available at the big library in the city so there’s a big hassle involved in going downtown just to get a movie so I’d almost definitely get the movie moved to the local library (when Amazon will have it right at my front door in 24-48 hours.)
Finally, libraries close pretty early around here, most people who rent videos historically do it after work or even later in the evening (I can’t remember a video rental store closing earlier than 10pm or so.) So the library doesn’t have very much going for it, at least to me, in terms of the “instant gratification” factor. The only reason I’ll ever rent anything is if it’s an online rental and that’s because of instant gratification. If we have to talk about a delayed acquisition of the film I’ll almost always just buy it outright, I have no reason to quibble over the trifling amount of money a DVD costs when it comes right to my front door.
This is why I cheered when Netflix was created, and happily dumped my membership in all of the local video stores. I am happy to trade the ability to grab something that is maybe approximately like what I would want to watch tonight, for the ability to get the movie that I actually want to watch in a couple of days.
I rarely wanted to rent the new title that Blockbuster had 25 of. I wanted the older titles that Blockbuster didn’t bother carrying.
The thing with Family Video is, they do HAVE some older, more obscure movies you would be surprised to see there. Movies from the 70’s, cult-ish items, what have you.
But never the one I want!!! :mad:
It’s like…well, let’s compare them to cookies. You have chocolate, molasses, peanut butter, lemon, sugar, date filled… Why don’t they have chocolate chip?? The chocolate chip cookies ought to be on that shelf, why aren’t they there???
I answered this upthread, but since you asked – the thing is that I don’t want to rent movies all the time. Only occasionally – and by occasionally, I’m talking once every 3-4 months. So $72 a year isn’t worth it for me.
Now, I admit that I may not be remembering things accurately, but I don’t remember Blockbuster and the like having a membership fee. You just signed up, maybe gave a credit card that they kept on file, and then were only charged when you actually rented a movie.
I haven’t looked into the library yet. That may end up being a good option, as many posters have pointed out.
Why would it be $72 a year? Three or four movies would be a maximum of three or four rental times. Yeah, you’re paying a couple dollars more and have to wait a few days to watch, but it’s not as bad as you make it out to be.
The only real problem I have with the DVD rental model is that there are no impulse buys. And that’s the reason I think we will eventually have at least all older movies that wouldn’t be profitable otherwise available on demand, as the actual cost is so cheap for the rights holders.
My biggest problem with streaming is the lack of the special features, and that’s something I don’t see being fixed.
Yeah, that’s what I was assuming. $6 a month for 12 months. Although perhaps I could sign-up, rent my one movie, than cancel my membership. And then sign up again when I want to rent another. I’m assuming Netflix wouldn’t be 100% happy with that arrangement, but it might be permissible.
That’s what I’m assuming is possible. I agree Netflix would rather you not do that, but I’m not to inclined to care what a business wants you to do as long as it isn’t illegal or immoral.
Sure you can, it’s very easy, they’ll keep your info and queue etc. intact for when you want to come back (I think it’s $8/month for the 1-DVD-at-a-time plan now though).
Ah you’re right, my mistake. I thought for some reason that streaming by itself cost $10/month and streaming + DVDs was a package discount at $16/month, but it turns out both by themselves cost $8 month for $16/month total if you want both (no package discount).
Actually, Netflix just made it even easier to do that.
It used to be, when you put your account on hold, it automatically reactivated at a certain point. Now it doesn’t. I’m sure they’d be overjoyed to have someone pay them $8 to rent a single movie every few months.
Have you tried calling Netflix as suggested in post #44?
If they let you switch between streaming and physical DVD option, back and forth as many times as you want (which is what they told me), you wouldn’t have to go through the process of signing up again (although since you’d have to add your physical address to your account, I’m not sure how that works).
They didn’t sound unhappy about it at all. It could have just been the guy I was talking to.
I know how you feel original poster, this happens to me all the time. Recently it’s with the movie The Sound of My Voice, and it also happened with Take Shelter and many, many more.
The responses here are correct when they say the library, unfortuantly that’s where it’s at, but hey it’s free!
It’s absolutely ridiculous that in our Digital Age that we can’t find most movies. This almost forces us to use Torrent sites. I mean how else do I get the movie? I’m not going to pay $15.00 bucks for a movie that I want to watch once.
Right now music and movies are stuck in this crazy digital war and we lose out. But hopefully in the future Netflix will be able to go all digital, after it axes some mail order stuff and truely bring in more great movies. There is no excuse that in this day an age that almost every movie ever made should be available, or at minimum the movies that came out in the last year for god’s sake. Geez.
Conversely, I’ve never done the legal stuff — I don’t have a TV and have never been in a rental store — and only watch illegally.
Worrying about the morality of such trivial actions is — like most obsessions over morality — perverse.
You’re on to something here. Some of my friends are in their early twenties and they all use VPNs to torrent everything you can imagine. I am talking about many terabytes of movies, shows, and music all stored on 3 terabyte drives. Thousands of movies and thousands of songs. They pass those movies and music around like candy. I own over 700 DVDs and about 60 BDs. They laugh because they have all of that on one drive and didn’t pay for any of it.
Hell, not only didn’t they pay for it, in many ways they have a better product. Their movies load instantly (unlike blu-rays), on any device they want, with no forced trailers, FBI warnings, or fancy menus that take twenty million years to load to the point where you can play the disc.
Is this ironic? Because this is exactly the type of thing he said doesn’t work on him.
And, no, no one’s livelihood is being taken away. Even if you take the MPAA at their word, they are only losing $20.5 billion, which, on a per person basis, is not more than $100, as there are easily over 200 million video pirates worldwide
Not that the MPAA is remotely correct, as they count each pirated movie as a lost sale, when most people wouldn’t watch nearly as many movies as they pirate if they had to pay for them. More proper estimates are around $446 million, which is around $2 per pirate.
I’m not saying whether piracy is right or wrong, just pointing out that you’ve overblown the consequences in this area. Assuming you weren’t joking, of course.