On the inside of this week's Netflix mailer is a little coupon dealie that reads:
quote:
GIVE FREE RENTALS
Invite your friends to try Netflix for free
No Late Fees
Over 25,000 Titles
Free and Fast Shipping
Go to www.netflix.com
Enter code: Friend62
To start your FREE TRIAL
No Late Fees
Keep up to 3 at a time
No Commitments
Well, seeing as how you're all my friends, there you go! We've been enjoying Netflix for some time now and won't step foot in a rental store again. Last month we were able to go through nearly 30 movies which cams out to about 60 cents per rental! Beat that, Blockbuster.
Umm... is it okay if I start a discussion on netflix in this thread?
Who uses netflix? I remember Chodder mentioning once he uses it, but I just want to get a picture of how popular this is right now...
Also, Sean (and everyone else), do you always get the movies you request, or do you often get your second and third choices?
Of course we don't have this in Taiwan. We do have ivideo.com.tw, which is basically the same thing. It has so far worked out a lot cheaper for us than visiting blockbuster, and we can pick the movies up at the local familymart (7 eleven-type store).
However the selection isn't the best (though better than most video shops in Taiwan, honestly). AND you can't return one video at a time.
Do you guys have this problem, or can you return one video and get another one no problem? I'd rather be able to return one video at a time because it takes 3 days to deliver the 3 movies, therefore if I could return one a day, I could have one new video each day works out well.
I dunno, hoping people can just say their likes and dislikes of netflix.... though at that price, how can you go wrong?
"I'm for it so we can put Nuclear power plants up there, and then beam the power back to earth on a laser beam." ~ Whidden
We have & love Netflix. Marc (Flemming) has it at their place as well. Though I can't speak for their experience I will say that on our side we receive everything we request. We probably receive discs faster than most because we live in the same city that their regional distribution center is located in, so it's same-day or next-day delivery between us. We return a disc, they receive it and send out the next one the next day and we receive it the day following. Our first month we were determined to see how many movies we could actually go through in a month of watching something every night after work. We did 25 films in 28 days. Not bad for 19 bucks. The price just got cheaper too.
Oh yeah. We also have an owned DVd collection nearing 500 titles. We are so content with our netflix service that we are considering liquidating most, if not all, of the collection and freeing up the cash - not to mention the wall space! We would only keep a select few like favorite music videos or independent films. Still up in the air though.
That sounds brilliant, hopefully our online video stores will be that reliable and convenient soon enough (though ours is approximately 10 US bucks a month, which is a fair bit cheaper).
One other thing, are the DVDs delivered straight to your door or are they picked up somehow? I only ask because is there a risk of them getting flogged (meaning stolen) from your letter box or porch?
"I'm for it so we can put Nuclear power plants up there, and then beam the power back to earth on a laser beam." ~ Whidden
Nobody bothers stealing them. They are delivered by US Mail to your box at home. It's a federal offense to tamper with the mail. Hardly worth the risk to steal a used DVD of unknown popularity whose street value is about 5 bucks or less. depending on the title.
Netflix is great. We burn ours Were trying to slowly replace all the tapes with dvd's. My dad has a billion movies recorded on tape so its a long process.
Do you guys have a problem there that they now have DVDs especially for rental? Like, if you hire the matrix reloaded, you don't get the bonus disc with special features? Or, in some cases, you get simply the movie on the disc with no features, no commentary?
"I'm for it so we can put Nuclear power plants up there, and then beam the power back to earth on a laser beam." ~ Whidden
No. If you wanted to rent a movie you would actually get the disc as if it were to come straight from the store. You cannot rent a whole box set though... only one disc at a time. The discs are not modified for rental use only or whatever... if thats what you mean.
Yeah, that's what I mean... like the rental version of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, though it came out about a week before it was released in stores, it was just a single disc version... crummy.
I guess bootlegging movies is a much bigger problem in Taiwan than it is in America....
"I'm for it so we can put Nuclear power plants up there, and then beam the power back to earth on a laser beam." ~ Whidden
Yeah. We don't have that big of a problem here. Since I live near New York City I remember listening to the news and they were cautioning people about street vendors who sell bootleg dvd’s. What they do is shrink wrap an empty dvd case and sell it to people for 5 dollars each. You don’t realize until you get home and that the box is empty and you just got ripped off. They were saying open the case first to make sure there is an actual disc inside… but then you don’t know if it is a blank disc or not. It isn’t like you could test it out before buying it or something. Plus it is illegal to copy movies and such or bring a camera into the movie theatre and record off the screen.
I dunno, I can tell if DVDs are blank by looking at the disc surface. But I guess most people couldn't tell the difference, unless they were familiar with copying DVDs.
I didn't know that happens really low.
I sometimes get the video-camera-ed movies off the internet, like Team America: World Police. There's no sign of it coming out here in the next few months, and I wanted to see it so desperately, so I d/led it. Still gonna spend money on it later awesome movie.
DVDs aren't really bootlegged that often here. It's hard to find copies of movies for sale, really... but mainland China is nuts. $1 for 1 disc. They almost always look authentic too...
Oh... but... NetFlix! Good stuff. People! Sign up NOW!
"I'm for it so we can put Nuclear power plants up there, and then beam the power back to earth on a laser beam." ~ Whidden
chodder said this in post #11 : ... [news reporters] were cautioning people about street vendors who sell bootleg dvd’s (...) They were saying open the case first to make sure there is an actual disc inside…
... since bootlegging is illegal, shouldn't the news reporters be cautioning people to not to buy from them at all rather than to check the quality of the goods? It's like them suggesting to taste your coccaine before you leave to make sure your drug dealer didn't cut it with something and rip you off...
At the end of the segment they said it was illegal and if you ever do buy em’ you could get caught and stuff. They even had a hidden camera and the reporter went undercover. My question is why don't they bust down on these guys? The funny thing is it is a way of life in NYC. Every where you go there will be some street vendor dude trying to sell you something. Especially in Manhattan... its basically one big tourist attraction with a stock exchange and some other big buildings with a giant park filled with strawberry fields
If you take the water ferri across the Hudson River from NJ to NY after you get off I swear to you there is ATLEAST 100 people standing there will little tables trying to sell you their art and other tourist junk that nobody wants
12-02-2004 02:56 AM
works out well. 
really low. 
