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We've been running Australia-DVD-Rental-Guide.com as an independent, unbiased review of the Australian DVD and game rental-by-post industry, which we hope allows you the customer to make informed choices. We're still going strong in 2009 after our blog relaunch and hope to maintain the high standards our readers have become accustomed to over the years.

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Comments from “Bob” DVD Industry Insider

This was a post we salvaged from our old forum written by “Bob,” who works in the UK DVD rental industry, but we're sharing it here as we believe the lessons are applicable to Australian DVD rentals as well:

“Hi, I would just like to take 5 mins of your time to explain a few facts about online rentals and their companies since allot of you seem to be missing these points. I have worked in this business before for about 2 years and have watched the whole thing grow from start to present.

Firstly the claims by Screen select and Lovefilm to have over 35,000 titles, while not strictly false, are misleading. They do not have 35,000 seperate titles that you can choose from. They make this number by counting allot of extras discs full of nothing but special features as seperate titles and also any title that is a 2 disc edition is split to become 2 seperate titles on their systems, they also have a number of titles they count on their site which are either unavailable on region 2 discs or that they do not have at all but they still put them on their site and count them in their title totals. I'm sure there is an element of this behaviour with all online dvd rental companies however the big 2 seem to be the big offenders of this type of misleading behaviour.

Customers also need to be aware that it makes little difference if a company has 50,000 titles to boast if they only have 10 copies of each one! Now it is true that none of the companies covered here divulge how much stock they actually have but common sense would suggest that BB (Blockbuster) would have. This is because of their standing store base, they already buy huge amounts of every title to fill their stores and already have longstanding relationships with distributors and studios. I don't know this to be fact but I would presume that this would enable them to easily buy more of each film than thei competitors, which should make them the best company for availability and turnaround times.

This final point is in the defence of all 3 of the big online players and one for all those online customers who seem to expect the online service to be just like a store. Simply it is not nor was ever intended to be. Why do you think a company such as BB do not have online the ''not here get it free next time'' deal that they do in stores?, because they are not the same!

All the online services are aimed at 2 main demographics, the movie buff who has a wide ranged film intrest who wants lots of dvds each month to watch but is not too bothered which ones from their list they get as they know they will like them all, or the family where they are happy to recieve a selection of different titles of old and new each week as there will be something to suit somebody in each order.

For those of you who joined any of these companies expecting to get all the new releases the day or week they come out on any sort of regular basis should prepare to be dissapointed and frustrated. My advice, if this is you, is stop being so lazy and go to a highstreet store!!

I hope this has helped enlighten you to online rentals!”



01 Feb, 2007 | Category: DVD Rental News | AddThis Social Bookmark Button
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