Movie Rental Review

We've had Netflix for several years. When Blockbuster came out with a competing service a few years ago, we did the free trial and were very disappointed. So we weren't expecting much when Blockbuster started its big media push for its Blockbuster Total Access. It's the same price as Netflix, and at least in Vegas, has the same turnaround time for movies. They've improved the user interface and now have a comparable selection to Netflix. The big plus is that you can return your movies to any Blockbuster store and get a store rental as well as another movies sent from you queue. This essentially doubles your movies, though the store rentals are subject to the same rental periods and late fees as usual. After the free month, we've suspended our Netflix account and gone with Blockbuster.

It's really brought home for me how much Netflix has revolutionized video rental. Going to a Blockbuster store is a huge disappointment after online rentals. Renting online gives you your choice of 10,000+ movies. You also get recommendations based on what you've like in the past. The movies are cross-referenced into several categories and you can search by actor, director, producer, etc. The store has only a couple hundred movies, mostly new releases. The movies are display alphabetically by title in only action, drama, horror, comedy, and family categories. There are tiny displays of anime, television, and foreign. It's terrible for browsing. We end up just renting "something" when we return our movies. It's really hard to find something you like unless you've selected it beforehand and it came out fairly recently. I now remember why we never rented movies before we got Netflix.