Online Movie Rental – What Movie Viewers Want

Consumers have a number of options with regards 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. A casual survey was recently conducted on a home electronics/entertainment site concerning the movie viewing habits of guests. The results pointed for some of the misconceptions that remain about online rental of DVDs by consumers that have not yet tried the service.

Participants in the survey were asked a variety of questions, including how often they watch movies at home, whether or not they rent movies online, and if not, why. Nearly 28% of these responding indicated they rent movies online. Of the rest, the most frequently cited reason behind not utilizing an online movie rental service was concern which centered round the perception that online movie rental will be more expensive than the local video store. When considering Manila Television: Movie Action article of scenarios it becomes evident which method is commonly more affordable.

For individuals who indicated they watch only one 1 to 3 movies monthly the savings from renting online are small. Renting 2 movies per month at the neighborhood video store would average around $7.40 whereas renting from Netflix for instance, if they find the plan which has a limit of 2 movies per month, would run $5.99. After obtaining a video at the local store the user could have overnight or perhaps seven days to come back the movie but an online rental allows them to keep the movie for an unlimited time frame.

For all those individuals who responded they view 1-3 movies weekly, the savings will be more significant. For instance, renting 8 movies per month would run around $29.55 at the neighborhood store so when low as $14.99 online should they chose the “2 out at a time” plan or $17.99 for the “3 out at the same 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 average cost at the local store will be $59.04 while online rental would be $23.99 allowing an individual “4 out at the same time”. Renting through a service like Netflix generally will not limit how many movies a person views but rather, how many movies they can have out at any given time. Therefore rentals are more or less unlimited with many of the plans.

The second most regularly cited reason behind not utilizing online movie rental services was that the individual rented movies on the spur of the moment and didn’t plan ahead. Certainly renting movies online and receiving them through the mail wouldn’t normally allow you to definitely decide at 6:00 p.m. that they want to start to see the Queen and receive it in order to be viewing the movie by 8:00 p.m. However, the delay for receiving movies selected through the mail is only 1 business day which would seem sufficient more often than not.

The continuing future of DVD rental could be changing however as Netflix announced in early 2007 that customers would now have the option of watching movies instantly via a streaming service that is available these days for some movies. The service should be quicker than most download services as streaming allows viewing of the movie since it is streamed rather than waiting until download is complete. Although a full transition from the current mail delivery system to a download type of service will take time, it really is clear that immediacy will only continue to improve. It would seem that other online movie rental services would follow suit in coming years to be able to compete.

Consumers who’ve not been initiated into the online movie rental world also could be unaware of other benefits/features of such services.

* Greater selection- A typical video store has 10,000 to 15,000 titles available whereas the Netflix online movie rental service has over 80,000. This might seem to eliminate the problem of consumers arriving at the store only to find that there is nothing there that they really want to see.

* There are no fees linked to the delivery and return of DVD’s; and there is absolutely no planing a trip to and from the store as movies are delivered to their door or to their home via streaming.