We believe Quickflix is the top online rental company in Australia; their site design is user friendly, their price plans are straightforward with many, versatile options, and they go the extra mile in customer service. Quickflix was launched in 2003 and now stocks over 32,000 titles, ten times as many video stores), as well as 290 new Blu-Ray High Definition titles, more than any other company. In February 2006 Quickflix acquired one of their major competitors, Homescreen, and their expansion is continuing--April 2008 press reports estimate Quickflix will double their subscriber base over the next year.

Quickflix offer their service throughout Australia and have an unmatched five distribution centers/DVD warehouses to reduce DVD turnaround times wherever you live. These are located in Perth, Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, and Adelaide. These centers have shipped over three million DVDs to more than 65,000 households across Australia.

Their website design was revamped in early 2008 due to customer feedback, and we're certainly impressed with the result. The expansions include member review and ratings of films as well as recommendations. There is plenty of information about each disc; cast, director, synopsis, etc. and even critic reviews for many films. Browsing is simple and easy, by Genre, Actor, and Director. They have an impressive 23 genres to browse through, each of which has many subgenres (a whopping 381 total when we counted; for instance, SciFi has Action SciFi, Horror SciFi, SciFi Spoofs, and another 14 subgenres!) No other Australian DVD company boasts this level of classification, important when you're browsing inventories of many thousands of films. Their search engine is powerful compared to most, allowing queries on title, actor, or year. Other features include Movie Selector, Kid's Queue, Queue top-up functions as well as a reviews by Empire magazine, and critics Megan Spencer, Scott Goodings, David Bond, and David Stratton. There is also an active blog, featuring the latest new releases, new features, general Hollywood news, and such--content no other Australian DVD rental service matches in our opinion.

Finally, they do seem to go the extra mile with customer service compared with other large DVD rental companies. This is not to be underestimated - if you've ever had problems canceling your subscription or returning a DVD which you never asked for, you'll certainly appreciate it. Moreover they continue to respond to criticism and suggestions to improve their service--their newly improved website, and recent introduction of adult film rentals are prime examples of this. Quickflix may not be perfect, but if we had to recommend one DVD rental company, this would be it.

Prices: Quickflix offers a 14-day free trial of its service. It offers both unlimited, and cheaper, limited rental plans. The budget options of 1 DVD out at-a-time (to a maximum of 2 DVDs per month) and 2 DVDs out at-a-time (to a maximum of 4 discs per month) cost just $9.95 and $19.95 respectively (basically $5.00 per disc) -- great if you're not a huge movie fan, but like to sit down to an occasional film. They also have 8 or 10 disc plans per month at $24.95 and $29.95, effectively $3.13 per disc and $3 per disc, respectively, which is competitive.

However, you really start to get get economies of scale with the unlimited plans. The high-value, family-oriented choice is the 3 discs unlimited plan ($36.95) -- great for flexibility and for having a continuous stream of fresh movies through your door to satisfy all the family. Even if you assume a modest 3 discs per week, this works out to $2.93 per disc, and many people will be able to watch far more if they desire. For the more die-hard movie buffs there are the 4 ($46.95) and 5 ($56.95) DVDs out at-a-time options, allowing for a continuous stream of dvds to your door, and brining the per disc price even further down, to $2.79 and $2.71, again assuming a modest one lot of discs per week.

Discounts are also available if you sign up for a six or twelve month contract, though we suggest trying them out for a month or two before signing a long-term contract.