Movie rental death match: Blockbuster Online vs. Netflix
February 19, 2008 · Print This Article
I’m a huge fan of online movie rentals. It wasn’t many years ago that finding a good selection of DVD’s at a rental store was difficult. Once they were commonly available at stores, they were commonly unavailable by demand. Netflix enters the scene with their online rental service. Never go to the video store again, never wait in the weekend lines, get your movies fast. Of course, I wasn’t ready to give up that local access to movies, so I didn’t venture into a subscription until Blockbuster Online was released.
I was reasonably happy with Blockbuster for well over a year, but then made the move to Netflix for comparison purposes. Then back to Blockbuster when the Total Access package came out (although it wasn’t branded as that at the time). Recently I decided to give the two a head-to-head comparison in a movie rental death match. I’ve used both services when they were immature and now again when they’ve matured and responded to competition.
There are obviously many similarities between the two services, and I suspect that the determination of which service is better for you will boil down to a few simple tradeoffs, or you’ll be attracted to one of the few differentiators between the two services.
Quick Overview of Online Rental Services
If you’re just now looking into online rentals, here’s a birds eye view of how they work:
For one flat monthly fee, you can rent as many movies as you like, but only a limited number of movies at one time. The number of movies you can have out at one time depends on the movie plan you’ve selected; more movies checked out = higher subscription cost.
There are no late fees, so you can keep the movies as long as you like. Postage is paid both ways, so there are no mailing fees. When you’re finished with a movie, just slip it into the postage paid mailer and drop it in your mailbox.
You determine the movies you wan to watch by building a queue. You can browse the online rental site, adding all of the movies you’d like to see to your queue, prioritizing the queue as you go. When it comes time to ship a movie, they grab the next available movie near the top of your queue and send it out.
Available Plans
NetFlix
| Cost | Rentals at a time | Rentals per month |
| $23.99 | 4 DVD’s | Unlimited |
| $16.99 | 3 DVD’s | Unlimited |
| $13.99 | 2 DVD’s | Unlimited |
| $8.99 | 1 DVD’s | Unlimited |
| $4.99 | 1 DVD’s | 2 |
BlockBuster
Blockbuster is a bit more complicated because they offer a mail-only option (similar to Netflix, but slightly cheaper), and the Total Access option. Total Access allows you to exchange a defined number of mailed DVD’s in person at a local BlockBuster store instead of returning them via the mail. Great for those days when you really want a new movie to watch.
With the mail only option, they are obviously targeting the price shoppers, but those plans make no sense to me. Blockbuster’s biggest differentiator is the in store exchanges; without them, they’re a poor Netflix knock-off. You can, however, switch from Total Access to mail only and vice versa whenever you like.
| Cost | Rentals at a time | Rentals per month | Exchanges per month |
| $34.99 | 3 DVD’s | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| $19.99 | 3 DVD’s | Unlimited | 5 |
| $15.99 | 3 DVD’s | Unlimited | 0 |
| $29.99 | 2 DVD’s | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| $16.99 | 2 DVD’s | Unlimited | 3 |
| $13.99 | 2 DVD’s | Unlimited | 0 |
| $21.99 | 1 DVD | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| $11.99 | 1 DVD | Unlimited | 2 |
| $8.99 | 1 DVD | Unlimited | 0 |
| $9.99 | 1 DVD | 2 | 2 |
| $3.99 | 1 DVD | 2 | 0 |
Personally, I’ve always used the 3-movies-at-a-time rental option. I can’t justify the minimal costs savings when I’m trading off the movie selection. Plus, we have wildly differing movies tastes in this house, so at any time we might have documentaries, art house flicks, mainstream movies, romantic comedies, and kids’ selections. But for
homes with less eclectic tastes, you might be able to get by with two-at-a-time.
Feature Comparison
Depth and Breadth of Selection
Blockbuster advertises a selection of 75,000 movies, whereas NetFlix advertises a selection of 90,000 movies. Netflix has a broader selection of independent, art house, exercise, and specialty titles. The depth of selection differs dramatically. One of my chief complaints with Blockbuster is that I only had a rough idea of what movies might be sent to me. After building a queue of 100 movies with each service, Netflix listed all but one of my movies as immediately available. And they shipped them in the order that they were listed in my queue. With Blockbuster, almost all of the new releases in my queue were available only after a “short wait” or “long wait.” Over a third of the total movies in my queue were not available to be shipped, and I often received movies that were down in the 8 to 10 area of my queue.
Turnaround Time
Turnaround time for both services was good, but Blockbuster had the edge, turning around movies every two to three days, whereas Netflix almost always required 3 days. I’ve heard that Blockbuster has an agreement with the Post Office where the Post Office scans the bar codes of returned movies to alert Blockbuster to movies that will be delivered to their receiving centers in a day or so, giving them earlier access to inventory updates.
I have heard of people being throttled for renting too many movies too quickly from Netflix. I can’t vouch for the accuracy of this conclusion as it has never been my experience, but I’m not a heavy movie watcher. Should you choose Netflix and are a frequent movie watcher, keep an eye on your turnaround time.
Reviews
NetFlix offers both user and critic reviews, as compared to Blockbuster’s user reviews only. The quality of reviews seemed to be much higher on Netflix as well. Netflix seems to attract more movies buffs, or more buffs with tastes that are a bit outside the mainstream releases.
Software Quality
Both services offer nice Ajax interfaces to build and maintain your queue. This is huge step forward from the last time I used Blockbuster’s service — the queue management was atrocious at the time. Netflix edges Blockbuster out here, offering up similar movies to the ones in my queue as suggestions for further adds. This saved me quite a bit of time, and allowed me to build my queue in about half the time as it took at Blockbuster. Netflix also has a pretty good learning recommendation engine that begins to predict with reasonable accuracy movies you might like.
Rental Options
Blockbuster offers online rentals and instore rentals, provided you subscribe to the Total Access program. Netflix offers online rentals, and has a catalog of 7,000 movies that can be downloaded on demand.
Conclusion
For most people, I suspect the decision will come down to the ability to walk into a local video store to rent a movie. If you find this important, it’s tough to beat Blockbuster’s offering.
For me, Netflix’s depth of movies and consistent turnaround allowed me to time which movies I’d be receiving near the weekends, negating the need for in store rentals. The ease of queue management, a better recommendation engine, and a better selection of movies were icing on the cake. I kept Netflix and canceled Blockbuster this time around.
Signing Up
Both services offer free two-week trials, and both are easy (and hassle-free) to cancel, so if you’re on the fence, don’t feel bad about giving them both a test drive to see which one works best for you.
I started out with blockbuster and then switched to netflix because all of my friends were using it and I wanted to be able to rate movies and also see the movies my friends were rating. About a month ago I had to cancel Netflix because I just couldn’t take it anymore…I was always getting movies that were 20 deep in my queue which I didn’t really care to watch and they seemed to be coming fewer and further between each and every week. When I first signed up for Netflix, they shipped out movies the same day one would clear my queue but as of press time they were shipping them out on average 2 days later. I can’t remember the last time I got a new release with Netflix and every time I contacted customer service I would get the same parrot answer, that they only get a limited number of DVD’s from the movie studios. When I switched to blockbuster they gave me two free coupons since it was the weekend and then shipped two brand new releases that Monday. They also have blu ray on line and in the stores which is a huge bonus for me. I will never go back to netflix. I just hope blockbuster doesn’t start going down that same path.
I have been a member of both Netflix and Blockbuster for several months and to me, there is no comparison. Netflix by a mile. I put my Netflix rentals in the mail and Netflix receives them the very next day. They also ship out the next discs in my queue the same day they receive returns. I send in my three discs on Saturday, Netflix receives them on Monday and ships out three more. On Tuesday I get the three that were shipped out on Monday. I return those three on Wednesday, Netflix receives them on Thursday and sends three more that I get on Friday. My Blockbuster service has been horrible. I turn in three discs to the store on Saturday and those will show up in my queue as returned to the store on Saturday within minutes of dropping them off. Every single time, it takes Blockbuster until Tuesday to ship out the next three discs and they do not arrive until Thursday. In the last 23 days, Blockbuster has shipped 12 discs out to me and three of those were returned back to Blockbuster without ever getting to me. A fourth disc shipped out on 3-18-08 (6 days ago) and was supposed to arrive on 3-20-08 and it still has not shown up. I called several times about the slow shipping issue and the poor service continued with no hope of improvement. When I called about this latest issue with discs going back without coming to me, they said it was MY Post Office’s fault. Funny how my Post Office could be at fault when all my other mail is making it and the discs are shipping out from Blockbuster and arriving back at Blockbuster the very next day. In other words, there was no possible way those discs could have even made it to my Post Office and back to Blockbuster over night. To sum it up, I was getting 6 discs a week from Netflix on a three at a time unlimited plan and less than 3 discs a week on the Blockbuster 3 at a time unlimited plan. Yesterday, I cancelled my Blockbuster subscription.
Thanks for the feedback. It’s interesting to hear others’ experiences with these services. I’ve just experienced my first “Long wait” for a new release with NetFlix (for I am Legend), but other than that, they’ve been snappy with the new releases. Even issued me a 5% credit today because their shipping system was down yesterday. Not in the same league as free movie coupons for the weekend, but I’ll take it!
Netflix is good to begin with, but they soon start slowing your shipments when you turn your movies around quickly. They surely don’t make as much profit off of you, so you get penalized. I decided to quit them and rent from kiosks at the local supermarket and a local video store. I’m actually getting more movies and paying close to the same. Since they are close, I just pick up and drop off on my usual route. Too bad Netflix treats their customers this way since I really liked the service, just didn’t like being treated like a second-class customer.
That seems to be the most common comment about Netflix. I wish they would publicly respond to comments of that nature.
Would that kiosk be Redbox? I love Redbox, but I find that I’m constantly paying late fees! Glad they moved the return time back to 9:00 PM though — that 7:00 PM return was a killer. Can’t beat a buck a movie, can you?
Wow! I’m glad I’m not the only one with this complaint about Netflix. I started in Aug. 2006 with the 3-at-a-time plan. The movies always shipped so quickly! I would get it the very next day and when I would send them back, sure enough-the next day they arrived at their processing center. I loved them!
I decided to play around with the other plans to save some money, tried the 1-at-a-time and it proved to be so not worth the savings. The 2-at-a-time proved to be the best for my personal needs and the money.
I can only speculate this but it really seems like I am being treated like a second class customer since I bumped my plan down. The movies now take 3 days both ways. I suspect it is NOT my post office as I am in the same address and all my other mail is fine.
I am going to give Blockbuster a try as their plans are so close in price. I’m not even sure at this point if it is worth me complaining to Netflix. It is a shame that they would do this do their loyal customers.
I’m still getting good service from Netflix after these months, but not great anymore. My turnaround time has increased slightly, so that now it’s not uncommon for a two-day wait, but a more dramatic change has been in the availability of new releases.
All-in-all still pleased, but BB is only a few clicks away!
I wanted to comment since there are a lot of different views between bb and netflix. i have had both accounts bb less then 6 months. and netflix over 15 months. one thing you have to keep in mind is each distribution center for either company doesn’t stock the same number of each movie. nor do they have same viewers. a dvd might be more popular in one area then another. also with the shipping issues a lot of you are going through, its not the companys fault. it not the mails fault either. its the quantity and the processing behind the scenes. i spent 4 hours on phone confirming the process of mail via post office. it might GET to you in one day but the return adds other steps. first it gets sorted THEN scanned THEN piled into large bins THEN resorted at the main mail facility THEN boxed once again in large bins and Finally mailed to either netflix or bb. when the company ships them it doesnt need to go through all that sorting it goes right to you. and since there are many bins to be mailed if some are filed too late in day it gets stocked till next mailing day. yea its a lot to take in. i never knew there was that many steps to mail something to a place 20 min away. i think it comes down to preference. bb has stronger mailers that have never torn. N has flimsy mailers that tear easily but somehow the dvd makes it back. N has a larger quantity of movies. bb online doesn’t so its not uncommon to see 5 out of 10 movies with very long wait. don’t forget if you choose bb store you are paying for gas to get there every time. that adds up very quickly. N has lots of watch instantly movies but there are very few pages full of recent titles. starz play is now built-in so you get an extra 1000+ instant movies to choose from. but after page 10 they are the older ones. i don’t have budget for the roku box so i am stuck for up to 2 hours in a computer chair when i rather lay down on a couch or bed. i think you should try the free offers from both places and the one thats faster and more to your liking stick with that.
Hi Aaron, thanks for the detailed comments. I’m still using Netflix, and I’m still pleased, though turnaround time and availability has dropped off for me. But the addition of Starz Play is great, and I’ve really been enjoying NetFlix’s on-demand service, so I completely agree with your comments. I think it all comes down to personal fit.
I’ve been a BB patron for several years…Wanted to try NF but here’s how it went. First, BB had a great plan, unlimited trade ins in-store for mailed in movies…..then they made it only 5 per month…Then this November 2008, they “moved up the in-store trade in” to your billing cycle, knocking you out of 3 weeks of in-store trade ins. Then their website no longer listed their customer support number. So,I was highly agitated and checked out Netflix. Well, what I love about BB is their website…NEW RELEASES…you can chose them by “in theaters” or “released on DVD’ and that made all the difference to me. On Netflix, it’s just “new releases” with no clue was to what is in movies or on DVD yet. So, after much checking on the internet, I finally found the Customer Svc nr for BB and ranted and raved about their cutting off 3 weeks of my in-store tradeins with their moving it up to the billing cycle. They eventually gave me 3 coupons for free rentals, which took up the slack. I still am wondering, though, if Netflix is better. I live 2 miles from a BB store and trading in is nice, plus it gives me a chance to look at the movies newly released in the aisles. Still, I love the surprise of the movies I get, and sometimes the clueless sleeves with no cover are a nice surprise to me. Am thinking of trying out NF.
What seems to be in this mix of commentaries is that NF uses a calibration thing about if you order too many movies, they slow the delivery. I live in Chas SC and that puts me closer to NF in Columbia, SC than BB in Charlotte, NC. The turnaround would be only one day. I’m a highend movie watcher, as I hate what’s on TV these days. So I’m a bit leary of joining NF only to find their turnaround time for movie deliveries would be one day for awhile, and then be 4 days BB has never let me down…I learned a secret about movie turnaround with them…..I get all my movies within 2 days now.
Still, they jerked me around for awhile, until I went rampant on customer service about the loss of a month’s trade ins with their changing of the cycle for in-store trade ins. They fixed that and now everything is ok. I just wonder, is NF still better?
There’s absolutely no doubt the NF throttle DVD delivery. I was one of the very early adopter and the DVD would arrive in 2 days every time. So I switched the 8 at a time and copied the DVD on my Hard drive and send the 8 DVDs back the same day (not to start a black market, just as an experiment!
and sure enough the DVDs would suddenly start taking as long as 5 days to arrive.
Considering they advertised the plans as “unlimited” it’s definitely false advertisement… So I canceled my membership after that, on principals… But my wife ended up signing up!
Moral of the story? uhhh… not sure. sorry…