Consumers have several options in terms of viewing movies in the home. Two of the most famous are renting movies at the local video store and renting movies via an online service. An informal survey was recently conducted on a house electronics/entertainment site concerning the movie viewing habits of guests. The results pointed to some of the misconceptions that remain about online rental of DVDs by consumers that have not yet tried the service.

Participants in the survey were asked many questions, including how often they watch movies at home, whether or not they rent movies online, and when not, why. Nearly 28% of these responding indicated they rent movies online. Of the remainder, the most frequently cited reason for not utilizing an online movie rental service was concern which centered round the perception that online movie rental would be more expensive than the local video store. When considering a couple of scenarios it becomes evident which method is commonly more affordable.

For ดูซีรี่ย์ who indicated they watch only one 1 to 3 movies monthly the savings from renting online are small. Renting 2 movies per month at the neighborhood video store would average around $7.40 whereas renting from Netflix for instance, if they find the plan that has a limit of 2 movies monthly, would run $5.99. After getting a video at the neighborhood store the user would have overnight or perhaps seven days to come back the movie but an online rental would allow them to keep the movie for an unlimited time period.

For all those individuals who responded they view 1-3 movies weekly, the savings will be more significant. For example, renting 8 movies monthly would run around $29.55 at the neighborhood store and as low as $14.99 online if they chose the “2 out at the same time” plan or $17.99 for the “3 out at the same time” plan. As viewing increases so does the likelihood of experiencing greater savings.

For those who responded that they view 4 movies weekly (averaged out to 16 monthly) the common cost at the neighborhood store would be $59.04 while online rental would be $23.99 allowing the user “4 out at a time”. Renting by way of a service like Netflix generally does not limit how many movies an individual views but rather, how many movies they can have out at any moment. Therefore rentals are more or less unlimited with lots of the plans.

The second most frequently cited reason for not utilizing online movie rental services was that the individual rented movies on the spur of as soon as and didn’t plan ahead. Certainly renting movies online and receiving them through the mail would not allow someone to decide at 6:00 p.m. that they want to see The Queen and receive it in order to be viewing the movie by 8:00 p.m. However, the delay for receiving movies selected through the mail is only 1 business day which would seem sufficient in most instances.

The future of DVD rental could be changing however as Netflix announced in early 2007 that customers would now have the choice of watching movies instantly via a streaming service that is available these days for a few movies. The service should be quicker than most download services as streaming allows viewing of the movie since it is streamed rather than waiting until download is complete. Although a complete transition from the current mail delivery system to a download type of service will take time, it is clear that immediacy is only going to continue to improve. It would seem that other online movie rental services would follow suit in coming years so that you can compete.

Consumers who have not been initiated in to the online movie rental world also may be unaware of other benefits/features of such services.

* Greater selection- An average video store has 10,000 to 15,000 titles available whereas the Netflix online movie rental service has over 80,000. This would seem to eliminate the problem of consumers arriving at the store only to discover that there is nothing there that they really want to see.

* There are no fees linked to the delivery and return of DVD’s; and there is absolutely no planing a trip to and from the store as movies are delivered to their door or to their house via streaming.