Movie rental death match: Blockbuster Online vs. Netflix

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. Remember that? When the “DVD section” was just one small rack in the corner? Once DVD’s became 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. And Netflix dominated. In 2004, they held 90 percent of the online rental business. 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, and with it came quite a few exciting features.

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 with each other. What follows is my side-by-side comparison of these rental giants.

I’ve been asked why I didn’t include smaller rental houses like DVD Empire, or specialty house like GreenCine, in my comparison. Have you ever used those services? I have. They’re awful. Netflix and Blockbuster are the only two services that offer a consistent and high-quality user experience, it’s as simple as that.

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