Ultimate DVD Rental Review: Netflix,BlockBuster,Walmart,and PeerFlix

In my continuing quest to find the best way to watch movies, I signed up for 3 of the major (and one not) online DVD rental services to find out which one is the best online DVD rental program. I reviewed Netflix, BlockBuster, Walmart, and PeerFlix. Here’s how these services work: you pay a monthly fee and can have a certain amount of dvd’s for as long as you want. When you’re done you put the dvd in the mail (the postage is pre-paid) and wait for your next dvd to arrive. You manage your dvd list online. (By the way, I don’t need a credit card for any of the free trials)

Walmart

I signed up for Walmart’s online DVD rental service first. Walmart is currently offering a free 30–day trial (the most generous of the group) and their service starts at 2 dvd’s at a time for $12.97/month. Signup was easy through their website and I was able to start selecting movies right away.

Walmart is the newest player in the online DVD rental game and they have the smallest selection and in my opinion the worst website. Their online DVD website is integrated into the main Walmart website and if you do a search that doesn’t find anything it takes you to the main website. It is very confusing and not well thought out. I think since Walmart hasn’t been in the game for too long their website is weak in terms of extra features like recommended titles to watch and user reviews. When you click on a movie you are interested in you get the standard movie review material.

It’s easy to add a movie to your que and like all services you have a que page to see what you have rented and what’s being shipped to you and so forth. On average movies were taking 3 days to get to me once I shipped out a dvd that I watched.

Summary

Walmart definitely has their work cut out for them to catch up to Blockbuster and Netflix. Their website design is barely usable and the only way I see them getting any real marketshare is if they lower their prices which is their specialty.

BlockBuster

I signed up for BlockBuster’s online DVD rental service next. BlockBuster offers a free 14–day trial and their service is either 2 dvd’s at a time for $12.99/month or 3 dvd’s at a time for $14.99/month. BlockBuster also gives two free in-store rentals a month with either plan. BlockBuster is definitely trying to leverage the fact that it has physical rental stores you can go to and I wouldn’t be surprised if they tried to do more creative things in the future to get customers.

BlockBuster has a much better website for their online DVD rental service. They have an easy to glance at bar on the right of your que so you know what you have out and what you are waiting for. The search feature is pretty good and they have plenty of pre-selected recommendations as well as user reviews. BlockBuster has a ‘feed me’ banner to tell it’s customers it’s a good idea to build up your que so you always have a healthy number of movies available to be sent out to you.

The que shows you what’s shipped and what you have requested. It also lists wait times for hard to get movies. There’s quite a bit of discussion on certain forums and websites about whether Netflix or BlockBuster has more movies and more importantly who has more new movies available. In my unscientific testing I found BlockBuster to have more new release movies unavailable than Netflix. On average it took 3 days to get a movie shipped to me once I was done viewing a movie.

BlockBuster has a rating system setup so you can see how a movie ranks overall on the site and you can rate a movie yourself. This helps BlockBuster make recommendations to you about movies to watch.

Clicking on a movie gives solid information about the movie including reviews, director, complete cast list and all of the stuff real movie buffs like.

Summary

BlockBuster has a good site design and the prices are very competitive. It has the advantages of offering in-store deals that may help it overtake Netflix.

Netflix

I signed up for Netflix online DVD rental service last. Netflix offers a free 14–day trial and their service is 3 dvd’s at a time for $17.99/month. (They also offer some other packages with more movies available for a higher fee) Netflix was the pioneer for this type of service and seems to have the largest customer base.

Netflix has the best site design, no doubt about it. It asks you to review the latest movies you watched and has a lot of options to rate and rank movies.

Netflix gives you many different types of recommendations based upon your viewing habits.

Netflix does a good job of highlighting new releases and other genres on it’s site.

Selecting a movie gives you the standard movie information with access to reviews and more in-depth data.

Netflix has a system very similar to BlockBuster (well, it’s probably the other way around since Netflix started before BlockBuster) to rate movies and get recommendations.

Netflix has a very neat “Friends” feature that let’s you share reviews and ratings with your friend. This way you can see what your friends have watched and what the recommend.

The Netflix que has all of the usual info. On average, it took 3 days to get a new movie shipped to me once I watched a movie. However, it allows you to setup RSS feeds (which is really cool) for your que, recent new releases and much more.

Here’s an RSS feed of my Netflix que.

Summary

Netflix has the best site design with the most features to help you find movies you like. They started this business and already have lowered their prices once.

PeerFlix

PeerFlix is quite different from the rest of the services I reviewed. What PeerFlix does is it allows you to trade a dvd you own with another person for a dvd that you want. PeerFlix has a nice website setup so you can browse movies that other people have, publish the one’s you want to trade and takes care of everything for you.

Here’s how it works: You put in a dvd you want to trade. PeerFlix assigns a value to it in terms of “peerbux”. If someone wants your movie, you are automatically notified by email and in your online account. If you want to trade that movie, you mail it out using the mailers provided by PeerFlix. (Note: you pay the postage) Once you have some peerbux in your account, you can go browse the movies of other people and select the movies you want to receive. Since you own them, you can keep them or keep trading them – it’s up to you. PeerFlix makes it’s money by charging you $1 for every trade you make.

You can enter a movie you want to trade into the system by either a barcode from the packaging or by doing a title search.

PeerFlix has several screens showing what movies you want and what’s been shipped to you.

You can also buy peerbux although the prices ($18 for 2 peerbux) seems too high versus the actual price paid for most movies on PeerFlix.

PeerFlix has a nice site for browsing and searching movies. (Not as extensive as Netflix, but not as bad as Walmart)

Selecting a movie gives you the standard movie info although it is not as extensive as the other services.

PeerFlix also offers RSS feeds and account history of what you have traded as well as your ratings and reviews.

When you are ready to trade a movie, you print a shipping label that shows the movie you’re sending along with the address. It’s a pretty slick system. I didn’t have a chance to see what the turn around time was to get a movie shipped to you.

Summary

PeerFlix is an interesting service that has a large number of movies available. If you don’t watch that many movies are simply want to trade some of your movies, this service is for you.

Conclusion

Walmart is really not in the picture yet and I think the features of the Netflix website make Netflix a better choice over BlockBuster. PeerFlix is an interesting alternative if you don’t want to pay a monthly fee and don’t mind having only one movie at a time.

Update: Several people informed me that Walmart came out with their service almost a year before BlockBuster, so thanks everyone for setting me straight! I also didn't get into the discussion of how long it takes to get movies delivered to me and which service has the most new releases available. Hacking Netflix is a great website that covers the DVD rental (and more) arena and there's lots of great discussion over there. So check it out for more information and reviews about the different services.