Saturday, January 10, 2004

A request

Gordy asks, "Please tell me NZ, why do you prefer Netflix versus your local video rental joint or pay per view."

Because I am extremely lazy.  I thought everyone understood that by now.

Lemme give you a concrete example.  Today I'm thinking, "Y'know, I think it's about time for a Jude Law film festival."  Now, I could go to the Internet Movie Database, search for Jude Law, write down the names of the Jude Law movies I haven't seen, get in the car, drive to my local Blockbuster, see what the odds are that they actually have a copy of "Immortality" or "I Love You, I Love You Not" (answer: astonishingly slim), get disappointed, end up renting "Enemy at the Gates" and "Road to Perdition" just 'cause they're there, end up paying ... what is up to now? upwards of $3 each? ... take them home, only watch one because I'd already seen them both, and now that I'm faced with them neither one really moves QUICK, ya know?, and then take them back in two days or face late fees.

OR... I go to Netflix.  Search for Jude Law.  See a list of 15 Jude Law movies available for rental.  Click little buttons to put them on my rental list.  Reorganize my rental list so they're right up top.  Know that (depending on how many movies I presently have out or in transit), they'll be here within a few days.  Watch them whenever I want.  Keep them till I have something better to watch.  Stick them in mail when finished.

There's something else, too -- it's sorta price-related.  I expect the aforementioned "Immortality" to be total crap.  I feel ok about renting total crap from Netflix, because it's all part of the monthly fee.  I'd feel like an idiot actually PAYING MONEY for it, but since I can get as many movies as I want from Netflix, I don't feel bad about taking chances on movies I don't have particularly high expectations for.

As for PPV -- blech.  The selection isn't that good and you can't really watch when you want.  Although I've been having some successes with early experiments with "Video On Demand" and "HBO On Demand" -- so that particular technology deserves further investigation.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Yeow! And I thought I was hard on myself. Okay, I like the idea of getting obscure movies when you want them, I was thinking that I would try recording a PPV movie. Again, noting obscure and IFC on satellite wasn't as good as I hoped. I've seen Mystic Pizza 200 times now, lets move on. I just hate another regular bill, isn't that how NetFlix works? Thanks for the link to the IMD. Thanks for the reply. Gordy