I’ve been itching to see a bunch of movies, but haven’t due to lack of time. Most movies I don’t see in theaters generally because most movies are not worth seeing. There are specific ones I will pay to see in theaters even if they are tremendously horrible only because I’m a sucker for them (or extremely bored). For most of my life, my family had always gone to Blockbuster or other local stores for video rentals. When I was in college, I started collecting DVDs of movies and films that I liked, but there was always someone who had some movie you wanted to see lying around. Now that my lifestyle has changed once again, I began looking into a new outlet of consumption.
I have a sufficient amount of bandwidth for streaming videos, however I am hugely disappointed by the supplied quality. It’s okay at best and a huge disappointment that suppliers can’t provide the purported better quality technology over a medium that is changing the way people interact. People are becoming more and more mobile which means that data will have to be compressed or reduced in order to satisfy technical requirements. That irks me on a huge level since entertainment echnology is turned into a cheapened video and audio experience for the sake of convenience. That is why I have turned away from streaming video. The price point of renting a poor quality streaming video online is not worth it either.
My cable/Internet supplier does provide video on demand and pay-per-view options which seemed like an initial attraction but extremely overpriced for what it is. I would have to upgrade my package and pay more out my pocket per month for a service that I would have to pay more money for should I choose to actually use it. That’s a huge no for me. That basically left Blockbuster and Netflix. For a while, I had been considering the advantages and disadvantages to both services. Blockbuster has a physical store in a very close proximity to me, but also an online service to compete with Netflix.
I decided to sign up for a one-month free trial of Netflix, and I was hooked on it instantly. I never found the service to be all that attractive, but my lifestyle has changed greatly over the last ten years, and now I finally understand its popularity. It’s nice to have a queue of movies to watch on DVD that are automatically mailed to you with no late fees, free shipping, and all the time you want to watch it. Having a queue gives me more motivation to actually watch the movie and receive the next since I can only take out one movie at a time (which is Netflix’s most basic plan). The time factor and having a physical disk is more incentivizing to watch than having some file downloaded onto my computer and sit there. The price is a good deal that would make it worthwhile for me to pay the for the service.
Blockbuster is also competing with Netflix now in the online business. Their plan is roughly the same with a few extras. I’ll probably sign up for a one-month trial with them after my Netflix trial expires to see what their service is like. I imagine it won’t be hugely different on the surface. Either one should be able to satisfy my need for media consumption.
