You might think that the online DVD rental market was saturated, and that there a no customers left for the DVD rental companies to fight over, but you would be wrong. The companies are still attracting thousands of new customers every day despite the number of people who have already signed up to use their services. The two biggest players in this market are Netflix and Blockbusters, and they account for the vast majority of DVDs that are rented online - but which one is best, and how do the two services compare?

Both Netflix and Blockbusters run very similar operations in terms of how their business model works. Basically you open an account, choose your movies, receive them by post, watch them, return them and receive your next set of movies - after this the cycle starts again. I have used both services extensively and can report on what's good and bad about both programs.

Netflix is the big daddy in this market, and has way more dvd titles than anyone else - this is a huge advantage if you are interested in watching a wide range of movies, but it also means they have multiple copies of just about every DVD that is ever released, meaning you shouldn't have to wait long even for the latest blockbuster films.

In terms of price, both companies pitch their most popular plan at just under $20 a month (Netflix $19.99 - Blockbuster $17.99 at the time of writing). Netflix seems pretty constant at this price, but I have found Blockbusters to be more aggressive when it comes to pricing, and you can often find an introductory coupon that might give you $3 - $5 off for the first 1 - 3 months or so. I'm not sure how many people would choose one service over another on price alone, because there are so many other factors to take in to account.

One area where I think Blockbusters has gained an edge recently is with improving the lag time between me sending dvds back to them and them sending me out new ones. With both services I've traditionally been getting a 3 day turnaround time from me putting my watched movies back in the mail to me receiving my new ones. Last year Blockbusters allowed me to return movies to my local Blockbusters store where they were marked as 'returned' - this cut down the lag time by a full 24 hours. While this has increased the hassle factor a little (driving to my local Blockbusters), it meant I could get an extra 2 - 3 sets of DVDs each month.

One final area where both companies fail to meet my expectations is when it comes to my rental queue. I have found that the more movies I put in my queue, the less likely I am to get the movies right at the top of my list - one way I have found to beat this, particularly when there is a new release I want to see, is to empty my queue of everything apart from the 5 movies I want next. That way they have no choice but to send me what I want.



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