Consumers have several options in terms of viewing movies at home. Two of the most popular are renting movies at the neighborhood video store and renting movies via an online service. A casual survey was recently conducted on a house electronics/entertainment site concerning the movie viewing habits of website visitors. The results pointed for some of the misconceptions that remain about online rental of DVDs by people that haven’t yet tried the service.
Participants in the survey were asked numerous questions, including how often they watch movies at home, whether or not they rent movies online, and if not, why. Nearly 28% of these responding indicated that they rent movies online. Of the remainder, the most frequently cited reason behind not using an online movie rental service was concern which centered round the perception that online movie rental will be more expensive compared to the local video store. When considering a few scenarios it becomes evident which method is commonly more affordable.
For individuals who indicated they watch only 1 1 to 3 movies monthly the savings from renting online are small. Renting 2 movies per month at the neighborhood video store would average around $7.40 whereas renting from Netflix for example, if they chose the plan that has a limit of 2 movies per month, would run $5.99. After getting a video at the local store the user would have overnight or perhaps one week to return the movie but an online rental would allow them to keep the movie for an unlimited time frame.
For those individuals who responded that they view 1-3 movies per week, the savings would be more significant. For instance, renting 8 movies monthly would run around $29.55 at the local store and as low as $14.99 online should they chose the “2 out at a time” plan or $17.99 for the “3 out at the same time” plan. As viewing increases so does the likelihood of experiencing greater savings.
For those who responded they view 4 movies per week (averaged out to 16 per month) the common cost at the local store will be $59.04 while online rental will be $23.99 allowing the user “4 out at the same time”. Renting through a service like Netflix generally does not limit how many movies a person views but rather, just how many movies they can have out at any given time. Therefore rentals are more or less unlimited with many of the plans.
Manila Television’s blog post about trixxies dramedy cited reason behind not utilizing online movie rental services was that the average person rented movies on the spur of as soon as and didn’t plan ahead. Certainly renting movies online and receiving them through the mail wouldn’t normally allow someone to decide at 6:00 p.m. that they want to see The Queen and receive it so that they can be viewing the movie by 8:00 p.m. However, the delay for receiving movies selected through the mail is only 1 business day which would seem sufficient in most instances.
The future of DVD rental may be changing however as Netflix announced in early 2007 that customers would now have the option of watching movies instantly with a streaming service that is available these days for a few movies. The service ought to be quicker than most download services as streaming allows viewing of the movie as it is streamed rather than waiting until download is complete. Although a complete transition from the current mail delivery system to a download kind of service will take time, it really is clear that immediacy will only continue to improve. It would seem that other online movie rental services would follow suit in coming years so as to compete.
Consumers who’ve not been initiated in to the online movie rental world also may be unacquainted with other benefits/features of such services.
* Greater selection- A typical video store has 10,000 to 15,000 titles available whereas the Netflix online movie rental service has over 80,000. This would seem to eliminate the problem of consumers coming to the store only to discover that there is nothing there they really want to see.
* There are no fees linked to the delivery and return of DVD’s; and there is no traveling to and from the store as movies are delivered to their door or to their house via streaming.