Netflix vs. Blockbuster.com - Page 7  

Well one good thing happened to me on my BBO account. I exchange 2 movies at a local BB store at 453pm on Thursday, and I recieved 2 new discs in the mail on Saturday. This quick shipment has not happened since I switched my Q to all HD DVD. Normally they don't show in the system that they were returned a day later and the new ones would take 2 days before they even shipped. Hopefully this will continue

I was with BBO since inception until this month. My experience was HD DVD availability was spotty at best.

Some movies like Trading Places and Midnight Run shipped right away others like Letters from Iwo Jima showed not available well into the release date.

Cancelled this month could not take it even with two free in store rentals. HD DVD support in my local store was pathetic. Once I have time I will go in and cancel my in store accounts at all three local stores.

I've gone back & forth about staying with them to show support for HD DVD - but if I never get any movies what's the point.

Hot Fuzz and Shooter were sent to me right away from Netflix, so I could not be happier with the service.

Why doesn't BBO send you both disc in a 2 disc set? How does Netflix handle 2 disc set? Sorry but I think a 2 disc set should count as 1 title and be sent out accordingly. BBO wants you to waste a whole separate rental on just the bonus features disc which is crazy IMO. Retail stores don't make you by each disc separately so why do they make you rent them separately. Past 2 titles I have rented where both 2 disc sets but I only received the first disc in each set (World Trade Center and Flags Of Our Fathers). This really has me upset and I'm considering canceling (or moving to Netfilx if they send both disc).

Really! Oh, decisions to make. I love the in store exchange from BBO but I think it is a rip off that you are forced to use 2 rentals to get both disc in a set.

I can't get Blockbuster to send me an HD DVD to save my life. They mailed out a movie that was number 7 on my Q instead of sending me the 6 available HD DVDs above it. This is my last month dealing with Blockbuster. The in-store exchanges just aren't worth it anymore.

Netflix handles special features discs as a seperate rental just like bb does. It's unfortunate, but that's my only problem with them. The selection is better than bbs in-store ever was, you get new movies as faster than you would waiting for them to be returned at bb, and it's so much cheaper than going to the store.

Plus, bb has pissed me off so many times in the past that there's nothing they could do to regain my business. I'd switch to only buying movies or even worse watching them modified and shortened on network TV before I went back to bb.

Had Net flix when I lived 126 miles from the nearest shipping facility. I would send a movie back on Tuesday, get a new one on Thursday. I switched to BB when they dropped late fees and offered in store returns. Their shippping was just about as fast, within a day or so, as NF. I moved in January to a location that is 15 miles from a NF shipping facility. I sent Blood Diamond (HD DVD) back Tuesday morning. Got a message Saturday morning sayin' that Hot Fuzz should arrive on or about Saturday.... Guess what didn't arrive???? Yep, Hot Fuzz, hell, or anything for that matter..

I have been a Netflix customer since the beginning of Netflix, and love it. I the past six months I also signed up for BB. I reduced my Netflix to 2 at a time unlimited, and added the $5.99 2 limited per month from BB. Since BB allows for instore returns and give you one coupon for a free rental per month, this limited 2 movies a month is really 5 movies per month for $5.99 which is a great deal. BB just increased the cost on this plan to $7.99 for new customers but I still pay the old price. So basically for the same cost as my old Netflix plan I now have both Netflix and BB so I get the best of both.

Anyways after having used BB for six months I still think Netflix is the best. If I put a BB movie and a Netflix movie in the mailbox on the same day, I always get my new Netflix movie 2 days later but the BB one takes 3 days. I've had issues with BB saying movies were available, and then not shipping me the movie. I sent them and email and got a reply back that the way the online system works is it looks at all the global distribution network to determine if a movie is available, short wait, etc. But BB only ships you movies from a distribution center that is close to you. So if a certain movie shows available it could be available at some distribution center in the East, but if you are in the West if may not be available but you have no way of knowing. Basically BB's availability showing is useless, so you never really know what they will ship you.

Adding HDDVD movies to the queue is way easier on Netflix. You can setup your account for a preference so if a movie is on DVD and HDDVD and your preference is set to HDDVD just click add movie and the HDDVD version gets added. In BB you need to go into the special HDDVD section to add HD movies. BB has some other shortcoming compared to Netflix too, but I don't want to go into all the gory details unless someone has a specific question. I use Netflix as my main queue and only put 1-2 movies in my BB queue to make sure they ship what I want.

jcg

[quote=Geaux Tigers]

This is happening to me right know. Blood Diamond has been #1 and available on my list for the past month but they always send me something else from my list. BBO just doesn't get it, if I have Blood Diamond #1 on my list this means I really want it and I don't care if it has to come from a distribution center further away. What I'm going to do this time is remove everything from my queue except Blood Diamond so that it is the only one available to send. If this works I will only add a movie one at a time to my queue to make sure I get the movie I want.

According to an interview I read recently (which could have been in this very thread, I don't remember), someone at Blockbuster admitted that they do skip down the queue to ensure you get a movie (any movie) quickly.

Please try putting the one movie in the queue, and let us know how that goes. Another option would be in-store exchange, but since it is the HD DVD version that you want, that might be more difficult.

Blockbuster really sucks at sending you HD movies. I always have quite a few on my list at the top of my queue, but for some reason they never send them. Some say available and others say short wait, long wait or very long wait. During the past week I have had luck though. I have recently got all the Matrix movies in HD and now they are sending me Bourne Identity in HD. However, movies like Shooter, 300 and Hot Fuzz which are at the top of my list have yet to send. Shooter says available, but they never sent it. If Blockbuster wants to increase its customers, they should get more titles or at least ship from different distribution centers. I am sure a lot of people are switching over to Netflix because of this.

My same exact complaints, along with poor list of HD titles

I say NetFlix for what is coming NEXT>>>

As far as I have read about, the NetFlix "Watch Now" option that allows you to view movies on you computer from their website is basically a test.

NetFlix is testing and proving the technology to stream movies over the wire and eventually use a set top box or PS3/Xbox to download full HD movies.

The rental plan stays the same, but wouldn't it be nice to:
Setup your Que
The number of movies for your plan is downloaded to the box or console
The moment you are done watching a movie and select to send it back, another one is downloading.

No mailing, no returning to the store, and instant gratification for movies in your que.

So far, the quality online is not to bad and they did a good job of making it quick.
Granted it is far from Blue-Ray/HD-DVD, but only time will tell...

I don't think it has anything to do with HD or not... they just suck at sending movies. I still have one slot of my 3-plan empty after 4 days (with several 'available' titles in the queue). We'll see if they send something tomorrow to break the dry spell. With Netflix I get movies I didn't even know were coming, with Blockbuster I'm always watching and wondering where the hell the movies are. I am not entirely sure it's throttling because it seems to be sporadic, sometimes they actually send you movies sometimes they don't, with no obvious pattern. Chances are (and definately by the rest of the "service" I've seen) it's just incompetence.

My close friend, a long-time blockbuster online user, just had his last straw and is switching to Netflix. His entire list of 40 something Bluray movies (yes he is a bluray fanboi, I can't convince him to try HD-DVD) was passed over for the seventh time in a row and sent him yet another children's movie that his daughter had added to the end of the queue.

IMO, the queue hopping can not be caused by the simple policy of fast-shipping. Netflix also has the ship-fast rules, but I still get many new releases and high-demand disks. My friend's queue of *40* something disks was passed over seven times in a row! That is a problem with supply, plain and simple. BBO just does not have enough disks available for rental.

BB seems to carry all the HDDVD titles and so does Netflix. When you say "poor list", which titles are you looking for that BB doesn't carry (and Netflix does)? See the direct to BB link/thread below for adding HD movies to directly your queue. Of couse the other complaints still stand.

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=844338

jcg

I just tried out the Watch Now option and I kept getting studders in the movie, so I only watched for a couple minutes. I for one don't get the Watch Now option even if it didn't studder. Who wants to watch a movie on your computer vs the big screen?

jcg

As I said in my earlier post I only put a couple movies on my BB queue. I just returned a movie to the store last night, and my queue has 2 new release HD movies on it, and neither shows as available. I'll let you know how long it takes them to ship something. A few weeks back they didn't ship me anything for 3-4 days so I emailed them, and they basically said sorry I should add more movies to my queue, but here is another free coupon for an instore movie rental.

And as a side note. When I was returning the movie last night there was about 6 people in front of me in line. Every single customer was handing in a movie from the online/mail to get a new movie. Now I see why BB is closing a lot of stores. I mean they must get very little money in from customers that actually come in and pay cash to rent a movie. This is probably why customer service gives out additional free instore coupons (see above) since BB must be looking at the stores as a total loss. Ie. they pay the employees and rent plus the movies are already there, so they don't really lose anymore by giving free rental out.

jcg

I'm brand new to BB for HD movies, but I will say that my first two arrived the day after returning another movie to the store. Granted they weren't brand new releases (Babel and one of the Planet Earth discs) but still out of 20 HD movies in my queue only 4 are not showing as available, and those are all "short wait".

So I had HD 2 movies in my BB queue that are both new releases and neither showed as available. I returned a movie to the store Sunday night, and low and behold they actually shipped me a new one later today (Monday). Last time I waited 3 days and didn't have anything ship before I emailed them, and they sent me the free movie coupon. Anyways YMMV.

jcg

So a HDDVD is 30 gigabytes and the average high speed broadband home gets approx 1 Mbit/sec, so this works out to (30*8*1000)/3600 or 66.7 hours to download a HD movie. Someday way way off in the future when the majority of homes have 100Mbit ethernet speeds to the internet this will happen.

Even a 4.7Gbyte standard DVD would take over 10 hours to download, so anything you download to watch over the internet will be low quality. Plan on getting your HDDVDs from Netflix for ~ the next 10 years IMHO.

jcg