Netflix alternatives (1 Viewer)

[Dave Gorman]

It seems the incidence of discs too scratched to play is becoming more frequent with Netflix. As I haven't won the lottery yet, I have to rent, not buy. The local B&M's of course don't have nearly the selection of Netflix. Are there any viable alternatives to Netflix?

I've looked at Greencine's website. Can anyone comment on their selection as compared to Netflix? and do they have any quality control (like Netflix apparently doesn't)?

On the downside, apparently Greencine only ships from San Fran, so it would be like the early days of Netflix when it was on average a combined 9 days of shipping time (currently running an avg of 4.5 days combined).

Are there any other alternatives?

 

[Zen Butler]

Dave, I love GreenCine. After running both simultaneously, I cancelled Netflix.



1. The turn around time is not that much better with Netflix.



2. The shape of the rental discs always seemed better with GreenCine. (Telling of the clientel? QC?)



3. I like GreenCine's website layout better and who it caters to.



I say, give it a month and try them out.

 

[Dave Gorman]

Thanks for the response, Zen! Maybe I'll give GreenCine a trial run. Turnaround time is what concerns me the most, however -- I suspect that may be more of an issue for me in Iowa than it is for you in CA

 

[Shawn_Sek]

unfortunately i found Greencine to be terrible. i couldnt even find enough movies to get the most out of my 2 week trial and i wasnt even after new releases. rumor was, which they admitted to, was that they dont have all the movies they say they do. when they come back damaged or lost, they werent removed from the site. also the turnaround time was very slow, the closer you live to CA will help with that though.

 

[Chris Lockwood]

My experience has been just the opposite. In 4 years with Netflix I've probably gone thru 500 disks. I remember ONE that was too damaged to play, because of a serious crack- almost looked like somebody had tried to fold it. I suspect that happened in the mail.





There may have been some with scratches, but not that affected play.





I think twice I got the wrong title- one totally wrong, the other the right TV show, wrong season. It's possible one or both of those were me choosing the wrong disk; I really don't know.





I've actually had more unplayable disks bought brand new from stores.





So that's at most 3 problems out of 500 titles, & with the roundtrip time being 2-3 days, plus everyone else offering fewer titles and/or having more expensive plans, I can't imagine switching.





If you're getting so many bad disks, maybe it's your player, or maybe someone in the post office is rougher with your mail.

 

[Dave Gorman]

quote:My experience has been just the opposite. In 4 years with Netflix I've probably gone thru 500 discs. I remember ONE that was too damaged to play

Just this year, I've been through 99 titles. Of those, 7 were unplayable.



One was in two pieces -- probably a postal incident. But the other 6 were all scratched to various degrees. Two of the scratched discs didn't look too bad, but had a long scratch going with the circle that wiped out 2-3 chapters of the movie. The other 4 scratched discs looked like they had been given to small children as toys.