Update November, 2006

Blockbuster has upped the anti with their "Total Access" program: Which means you can now take your online rentals to any Blockbuster store and trade them in for movies in the store, and they will still send you your next movie/s in your online queue. So...for about $18 bucks a month, you can get about 24 movies a month, which works out to less than a dollar a movie (can't beat the price).

Comparison of Renting DVDs Online from
Netflix, Blockbuster, and Walmart

Note: Walmart has shut down their DVD rental program as of June 17, 2005.

You've seen the hype - "Rent all the DVDs you want", Unlimited DVD rentals", "Rent unlimited DVDs for less!". Is it really true...can I really rent as many movies as I want for a set price per month? Read on...

I initially signed up online with Netflix, Blockbuster, and Walmart to run a four week test to find out which company really had the best bang-for-the-buck, but I've decided to keep the test running for awhile to see how they average out over a longer period of time, you can see all my daily results below. I actually signed up with Blockbuster on 11/15/04, so I already had an established account with them prior to the test.

Goal: To find out which company could process orders the quickest, and see how many movies I could expect to get each month.

Testing method: I loaded up each companys queue with a variety of movies. Movies in my queue that had a wait (short wait, long wait, or very long wait) would be moved to the bottom of my queue. All returned movies would be dropped off inside the Post Office within 24 hours of receiving them.

Before I tried the online stores, I tried Blockbuster's in-store unlimited rental plan, which is $15 for the first month and $25 per month after that, and allows you to have two movies out at a time (sounded good at first). Unfortunately, after a couple of months I found the selection of movies in the store to be too limited, and they soon ran out of movies that I wanted to rent. Hollywood Video is also in the process of implementing an unlimited rental plan called MVP (Movie Value Pass) at their stores, although my local stores still don't know if or when they will be getting it. Their plan is supposed to be $14.99 a month with 3 out at a time, but doesn't include new releases until the movie has been out for 4-6 weeks.

Payment Plans: All payment plans are based on an *unlimited amount of movies per month, except for the Netflix 2 movie plan, which only allows you 4 movies per month. The plans in bold are the ones I used for this test.

Daily Results: Below you can see the dates, and the number of movies received from each company during the test period. While you may not return your movies as fast as I did during this test, it's nice to know how soon you can expect your next movie. Your results may vary depending on how close you are to a distribution center.

As you can see in the table below, Netflix was really on the ball the first two weeks during my free trial period (12 movies), but what happened to them the following two weeks after the trial period (7 movies)? Hmm...seems strange.

In the previous two months before this test, I received 28 movies from Blockbuster, although I may not have returned them all within 24 hours of receiving them, that still averages out to 14 movies per month, which is comparable to the results below.

I decided to drop Walmart and continue testing Netflix and Blockbuster.

My billing date with Blockbuster used to be on the 2nd of the month, but because of a glitch with my credit card they cancelled my account on 2/20 (my old credit card expired and the new one they sent me had different numbers on it). But as you can see I continued to get movies from 2/2 to 2/19, so in a since I got 7 free movies for 17 days, and when they reactivated my account on 2/21 I received two more free e-coupons to be used in their stores.

Well now that the month is over, it doesn't look like I really got any free movies for those 17 days after all. If you add those 7 movies to the whopping 4 movies I received after the new billing date, plus the 2 in-store coupons, that's only a total of 13 movies. This really makes me believe that Blockbuster is putting a limit on how many movies they will send you based on the amount of money they received from you.

At the start of the Mar/Apr 4 week cycle; I'm not sure what's going on with Blockbuster (growing pains), but I have about 100 DVDs in my queue and just over 75% of them have a wait on them. My Netflix queue only has a wait on about 3% of the DVDs in my queue. I have also had six of the movies in my Blockbuster queue change from having a wait, to "coming soon". Makes me wonder if they really ever had them in stock to begin with.

Netflix has gotten pretty pathetic the last three months, not only because of the few DVDs they shipped, but also because Netflix and Blockbuster got several new Poker DVDs in at the same time, and in the time that I had received and returned them to Blockbuster, Netflix still had a very long wait on them. At least Blockbuster is very consistent with the amount of DVDs they ship you each month (a low of 11 DVDs and a high of 14 DVDs), and their queues have gotten a lot better, and their average cost per DVD is less. I'm starting to feel like Netflix is more of a crap-shoot each month, with a low of 11 DVDs and a high of 20 DVDs, that's a big gap.

I've decided to close my account with Netflix and stay with Blockbuster. Before I closed my Netflix account, I had them email me my rental history. The email I received shows the title of each DVD, the date they shipped the DVD, and the date they received it when I shipped it back. It's interesting that in the beginning there was only a 3-4 day turnaround between the time they shipped a DVD and then got it back, but in the last few months the turnaround time jumped to 6-7 days. What's going on, are they holding my returns up for an extra 3 days to delay shipping me my next DVDs?

* Blockbuster's average is a little skewed because of the second four-week-cycle above when they had a problem with my credit card. If you throw out that four-week-cycle, Blockbuster's average cost is only $0.96 per disc, which is in line with with the two months prior to starting this test.

Overall Rating

Speed: You can see by the "Daily Results" above how fast each company is. So far, I've noticed, if Netflix says they shipped a movie on a certain date, it will usually arrive the next day. Blockbuster's movies seem to show up about 3 days after they say they have been shipped. Again, this seems strange considering both of their distribution centers are in Santa Ana, California. Although the movies could be coming from a different center if Santa Ana doesn't have them in stock.

In Blockbuster's Q&A (Questions and Answers) they state;

"BLOCKBUSTER Online's shipping system allows the postal service to notify us when returning DVDs have been mailed, before they actually arrive at one of our distribution centers. Once the post office notifies BLOCKBUSTER Online of your return, we'll check your Queue and ship the next available DVD title as soon as possible."

This seems rather odd considering that I returned 2 Blockbuster movies and 3 Netflix movies on 1/19, and while I received 3 more movies from Netflix on 1/21, Blockbuster hadn't even shipped the next movies in my queue until 1/22. Even stranger was the fact that for two days there were two empty slots in my "Shipped Movies" queue, which again makes me wonder if they are imposing a limit by not shipping more movies right away. But don't let this deter you, renting movies for about a buck each is still a pretty good deal.

Availability: Usually the newer releases will have a longer wait on them until the supply catches up with the demand. For testing purposes I avoided the new releases, other than to add a few to each queue for monitoring purposes. While testing these online services I rented the new releases from my local video stores, and I think I will continue to do that no matter which online site I decide to go with. After all, my main reason for using one of these online services was to get access to a larger selection of movies than my local video stores could offer.

Netflix had the best overall availability of movies in stock (about 3% of the movies in my queue.had a wait), while Blockbuster was the worst by far in the begining (anywhere from 30% to 75% of the movies in my queue had a wait. But they have gotten a lot better lately and only about 5%-10% have a wait). Both companies may have a lot of titles to choose from, but what good does it do you if you have to wait several weeks to get it.

Selection: All of these online sites have a much larger selection of movies to choose from than you will find in any brick-and-morter video store. I did find a few movies that where only available on Netflix and not the other two, and I found a few movies that where only available on Blockbuster but not the other two, I didn't run across any movies on Walmart that weren't available on the other two.

Overall: Personally, the e-coupons from Blockbuster are a nice bonus (since you can rent movies or games with them), I let the kids rent games, which saves me about $14 per month, and if you look at it that way I'm only paying $1 per month for all the movies I get in the mail.

Depending on the types of movies you are into, you may want to try both of the online sites to see which one you like best. But don't expect to get 20 or 30 movies per month on the "3 out at a time" plan.

My recommendations: If you have a Blockbuster store near you, and can take advantage of their in store coupons, then I would pick Blockbuster. They are more consistent with the amount of movies they will ship you each month, they cost less per month, and their average cost per DVD is less. I have also received two FREE "Previously Viewed" DVD movies from Blockbuster in the last 3-4 months via an e-coupon that you can print out and take to their store and redeem for one of their "Previously Viewed" DVDs.

If you are thinking about going with the 8 out at a time plan...don't. I have heard from several people that their average cost per DVD went up when they went with one of the more expensive plans. If you want more movies you would be better off signing up with both Netflix and Blockbuster at the same time. You would have the advantage of getting movies that the other company may not have, and also getting movies quicker if the other company has a wait on them.

Note: There is a term people use called "Throttling", which means your DVD shipments will be throttled back if you are a "heavy user". You can see in the Netflix tables above that I averaged 18 movies per month for the first 4 months, but only 12.7 movies per month in the final 3 months of the test period. Which is probably why Netflix was hit with a class action suit for; false advertising (Rent all the DVDs you want), unfair and deceptive trade practices, breach of contract as well as claims relating to the Company's statements regarding DVD delivery times. Personally, I feel that Netflix gives you a false-sense-of-service in the beginning, and then pulls the rug out from under you. But, if you are not a heavy user...as I was, you will probably not notice any throttling.

At least Blockbuster doesn't give you a false-sense-of-service...they throttle you right from the beginning. But after using Blockbuster for almost a year now, I have consistently received about 14 DVDs per month in the mail, plus the 2 e-coupons, for a total of about 16 DVDs per month...and for $15 per month I can live with that. Now that the test period is over, I return my Blockbuster DVDs about 2 days after I receive them, and I still get about 14 DVDs per month in the mail.

Additional links and information

Amazon.co.uk has launched a DVD rental program in the UK, and rumor is that they may bring it to the U.S. later this year, or partner up with Blockbuster or Netflix.

Before you jump into an online DVD rental program...you may want to know what others have to say about them:
Manuelsweb.com
NetflixUnderground

ABC News report "Netflix Gets Some Criticism From Its Subscribers"

Download the ABC News video:
To download the video file, right-click on the link below and click, "Save Target As", or "Save Link As" depending on your browser. Remember where you save it to on your hard drive.

ASF format (8.5MB) will play on most streaming media players like "Windows Media Player", etc.

Here's a Netflix ad with a little bit of truth and a little bit of humor added in.