Consumers have numerous options as it pertains to viewing movies at home. Two of the most used are renting movies at the local video store and renting movies via an online service. An informal survey was recently conducted on a property electronics/entertainment site about the movie viewing habits of website visitors. The results pointed to a number of the misconceptions that also exist about online rental of DVDs by consumers which have not even tried the service.
Participants in the survey were asked numerous questions, including how often they watch movies at home, if they rent movies online, and if not, why. Nearly 28% of the responding indicated that they rent movies online. Of the remaining, the absolute most frequently cited reason for not utilizing an online movie rental service was concern which centered around the perception that online movie rental will be higher priced than the local video store. When looking at a few scenarios it becomes evident which method tends to be more affordable.
For people who indicated that they watch only 1 to 3 movies each month the savings from renting online are small. Renting 2 movies each month at the local video store would average around $7.40 whereas renting from Netflix for example, if they chose the plan that’s a control of 2 movies each month, would run $5.99. After obtaining a video at the local store an individual would have overnight or simply seven days to come back the movie but an online rental will allow them to help keep the movie for an unlimited period of time.
For those people who responded that they view 1-3 movies per week, the savings will be more significant. For example, renting 8 movies each month would run around $29.55 at the local store and as low as $14.99 online if they find the “2 out at a time” plan or $17.99 for the “3 out at a time” plan. As viewing increases so does the likelihood of experiencing greater savings.
For those who responded that they view 4 movies per week (averaged out to 16 per month) the typical cost at the local store will be $59.04 while online rental will be $23.99 allowing an individual “4 out at a time” ;.Renting through a service like Netflix generally doesn’t limit 123movies just how many movies an individual views but instead, just how many movies they can have out at any given time. Therefore rentals are more or less unlimited with lots of the plans.
The next most regularly cited reason for not utilizing online movie rental services was that the individual rented movies on the spur of as soon as and didn’t plan ahead. Certainly renting movies online and receiving them through the mail would not allow anyone to decide at 6:00 p.m. that they wish to see The Queen and receive it so that they can be viewing the movie by 8:00 p.m. However, the delay for receiving movies selected through the mail is just 1 business day which would seem sufficient generally in most instances.
The future of DVD rental might be changing however as Netflix announced in early 2007 that customers would now have the option of watching movies instantly using a streaming service that’s available these days for many movies. The service must certanly be quicker than most download services as streaming allows viewing of the movie since it is streamed as opposed to waiting until download is complete. Although a full transition from the current mail delivery system to a download kind of service will need time, it’s clear that immediacy will only continue steadily to improve. It would seem that other online movie rental services would follow suit in coming years to be able to compete.