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Netflix vs. Blockbuster Online
Talonrazor
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
So my roommate and I are looking at splitting Blockbuster Online. With it's free game rental a month, same pricing and plan as Netflix and giving you the option to return movies to stores in exchange for a movie, it seems to be the prime candidate. Anyone have a bad experience with them? Are they really better then Netflix?
Thanks!
Thanks!
Talonrazor on
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They both suck. Both will throttle you down for having the audacity to use their service.
Comes with the plan.
Well, it's not really free then. It's part of the plan.
Err, Netflix doesn't have it. Free as in, you can rent one game for free a month without paying normal rental fees.
EDIT: Man, thanks for the insightful wisdom, hambone.
And the "free" game rental can only be gotten in-store.
Netflix is good, or it was when I had it. I ended up canceling it, though, because 9 times out of 10 when the movie did show up it wasn't the kind I was in the mood to watch right then. Much better, for my wife and I, to just go to the rental store.
I do recommend the hell out of Netflix if you want to see some obscure movies or rent TV on DVD.
Oh. Sounds like a better deal then, maybe they have more information on their websites? I have a friend who has Netflix, maybe I can ask him about it.
Start up trials for both, and see how long it takes each of them to get movies after you send yours back. Netflix has been great for me with a pretty consistent 2 day turnaround, but it takes 3-4 days in the city, so it really depends on your location.
Other than turn-around time, there can't really be any differences between the two. They both have huge selections.
My roomie likes obscure movies, I like watching TV seasons. Blockbuster Online says they've got 60,000+ titles while Netflix has 70,000+. Do you think Netflix has much wider selection.
Well, both plans are the same. 17.99/month, 3 dvds at a time, turnaround time supposedly the same. BBO has game rental, Netflix does not. So you are paying nothing extra for it.
Um...do you not know about their Total Access deal?
You return it to the store and you get another free movie rental in-store right then for that movie you returned. And they'll automatically check the movie you're bringing in as returned(instead of waiting 3-4 days for them to get it and then send the next one out) and send out your next movie.
Unless you hate Blockbuster, I can't see how Netflix could be better with this deal. Until Netflix's online distribution gets bigger, that is...
Right, exactly. This is really attractive to me.
My roommate just searched an obscure title he wants and only Netflix has it, so Netflix might have a better selection. But Total Access to me is a big deal.
I hope Alaska can get these deals.
Turn-around was the same for me with both services.
GameZnFlix does, well, games AND "flicks". I haven't heard too much about them, but could prove to be useful.
Also, everyone I know uses Netflix (myself included), and have only good things to say about it.
Gameznflix is horrible. Probably the worst online rental service I have ever used. The have a warehouse less than 30 miles from me, yet it was taking at least a week for me to get anything from them, and a week for them to receive the movies/games back.
I've used Netflix for years but started using Blockbuster Online during the past month or so. I think I'm going to stick with Blockbuster, mostly every movie I try to rent (Mostly HD DVD / Blu-ray) is always short or long wait with Netflix. Then when they do finally ship a movie, it comes from the other side of the country. With BB, even if it's a short wait, it still normally ships out pretty quick. Plus I like how you can use the coupons they give you for free game rentals.
I just signed up with them. We shall see how it goes.
I have not heard of either of theses and that makes me a tad weary.
BBO looks to have slightly longer turn-around time in Alaska, while Netflix has a center here in Anchorage. That might factor in. Still, Total Access and the free game rental is pretty attractive.
Linky: http://www.netflix.com/MediaCenter?id=5384
I use netflix personally, BBO had too long of a turnaround time to be convenient (4-5 days compared to Netflix's 2 days, rarely 3).
Just make sure you use it, I'd reckon if you watched two movies a week, you're getting your money's worth. It costs almost $4 to rent a DVD at Blockbuster here, take 2 $4 dollar rentals a week, times four weeks, that comes to almost 32 dollars a month in Portland, OR. As the math goes, if I watch four movies a month or more, then Netflix pays for itself.
But seriously, there is no better way to watch TV shows that you haven't seen than renting them through Netflix or BBO.
Remember, that 1 free game rental is a five/seven day affair, and not for one month like everything else you could keep.
And you live in Anchorage, hell, you absolutely need to do Netflix. What I would do is go to your local Blockbuster, check out their selection, especially how many of their new releases they keep in stock. If it's like my blockbusters, paltry, then returning to the store to check out a new movie isn't really worth it. Mail out time from Alaska to the states and back is ridiculous.
And yet, in my experience, watching more than one or two movies a week is a one-way ticket to getting throttled down, particularly after your two week free trial ends.
Each movie shipped costs Netflix (and I'd assume BBO) ~$2. So if your renting habits happen to cost them more than you pay monthly, you go from being a "valued customer" to being a parasite.
In response, you can expect turnaround to take 2-3 days longer, lose priority over other customers for high-demand movies, recieve series titles out of order (to slow you down), recieve shipments from facilities on the other side fo the country (instead of the one a few miles down the road).
Any time there's a shipping error or cracked disk, the customer loses out on the time it takes to have it sent and re-sent. Though, BBO allows you to have your next movie sent when there's an error.
One time I had the wrong movie (in the right sleeve) sent to me three times in a row. Once, I could understand as an error. Twice, well that's sort of stretching it. Three times? The writing's on the wall, I can tell when I'm not wanted.
I mainly watch the older and more obscure movies and Netflix seemed to have more of the ones that I wanted. In my time with them I found that Netflix had a turnaround time about a day or two faster than BBO (I'm on Long Island). Pretty much every movie that I wanted from Netflix shipped to me in order in my queue with little or no delay at all. BBO would seemingly ship me movies at random from the top 15-20 movies in my queue, which I disliked. I've had movies that said they were Available Now in my #1 slot stay there for months while other random titles from my queue shipped to me. I also had many discs shipped to me from BBO that were either wrong, broken, or damaged (20-25% of my titles from them arrived that way), while I experienced that much less with Netflix.
In my area, at least, I think Netflix is the better service. If you're more into the new releases and can put up with some damaged discs, BBO is probably good for you with the Total Access, if you have a Blockbuster nearby. Alot of it has to do with how good your local distribution centers are. There are places where Netflix has shitty service and BBO ships out its titles in a timely fashion.
Netflix is also rolling out a streaming movie option on their site over the next few months. Basically, you can watch one hour of content for every $/month you pay on your plan. So it's 18 or so hours if you have the regular 3-out plan. The video quality will scale to your bandwidth (up to DVD quality they claim) and theres around 1000 titles to choose from currently, but you have to watch it in a browser for now.
I've tried Gameznflix for a few months and they got some fancy coupon right now (the code is "emmys" i believe) now that makes it $7/$10/$13 a month for the 1/2/3 out plans for the life of your subscription. They had trouble shipping me alot of new release games and their movie selection isn't too great. I still like it better than Gamefly and their exorbitant prices (plus it took alomst two weeks for me to return and receive a game from California).
BBO on the other hand would sometimes take a week to get stuff to me, sent me the wrong selection on more than one occasion and when I would send the DVD back it would get lost at some point in the return process.
That and im tired of saying "not interested" whenever I went to the BB store and the clerks would repeatedly hassle me to join BBO and the rewards program.
Enlist in Star Citizen! Citizenship must be earned!
This is never, ever an issue with Netflix, and I have no idea why BBO would even make it a problem. It's really not hard to say "This disc is part of a series, I should send it in order".
I work at blockbuster and I also have the program itself, in addition to the free rentals I get at the store, because it's that sweet. Also, if you like it and want to keep it, you can go cancel the program and say "It was too expensive" as your reasoning in order to be offered the same thing at 2 dollars a month cheaper on a six-month contract.
When you do the in-store exchange you cut the turn around time in half, as blockbuster understands that the movie is in their possession, so to speak, and sends the next one, thus having your time (or if you say your area has a longer wait than netflix, making the time the exact same or still shorter). You get the free rentals in the store of the newer title or hard-to-find online title to watch while you wait for your online movie.
If nothing else, the 9.99 1-at-a-time online program gives you a free game once a month, which in my area costs 8 dollars, making it a pretty damn good deal, provided you rent at least a game a month.
I would definitely recommend at least trying out blockbuster first, as I know they've changed a lot of their distribution methods in the last few months. Select stores now send out movies, making the distributing time really low. If you want a trial code, try two weeks with 39464b
You have to manually choose "Break set" in order for this to happen. If people let it happen, they're retarded. All sets and TV shows are grouped by default as "send in order of disc" and locked until the user choses otherwise.
This is most assuredly not true. Netflix did just that: they sent me a television series out of order, despite it being grouped as a series, as recently as two months ago.
This is really nice, because my apartment sits on two major roads and I can get on one and drive for ten minutes to get to a blockbuster.
Sounds like Netflix has good turn around times and obscure titles while BBO's more convenient.
Did it ship both the later and earlier discs at once?
Netflix:
- Slightly faster shipping for me in Sacramento. In LA they took the same amount of time.
- Slightly Wider selection.
- Has a larger stock of each movie. Even when movies are listed as "Long Wait" I got them 2/3 times on my next shipped movie.
- Is instituting a movie download service. Some people already have it and eventually everyone will. This is pure gold for me, but it may not be your cup of tea.
Blockbuster:
- For the same price you get a monthly game rental and in store rental coupons (I think I was getting one once a week, but it probably depends on what plan you get)
- Returning movies in store speeds up the shipping process immensely
- Fairly frequently I would never be shipped the #1 movie in my que, even if it was marked as "available now." BB said that this is because the movie is available, just not in my preferred shipping radius. So, instead of shipping it they would go down the the next movie in my que. This annoyed me, as there was no way to tell them to just ship it anyways, even if I have to wait an extra day or two.
So ya, that's my two cents. Both are great plans, and each plan has some unique advantages.
You know, I would venture to say they have at least 10,000 more movies than Blockbuster. You know, that whole math thing and all.
No. Netflix sent me the later disc two or three days ahead of the earlier one.
Oh hey cool. Numbers mean jack shit, as previously noted. Those 10,000 movies could be fucking exercise movies.
You didn't ask anything about the type, you asked if they had a wider selection and then went on to give numbers. That is still a WIDER selection you twat.