GreenCine Online Video Rental
Being a lover of documentary and foreign films, I have a hard time finding desired titles online at reasonable prices. Some documentaries had limited releases, and are no longer even available for purchase. If finding them online is hard enough, than forget your local video store. Even Netflix is spotty with regard to some of my favorite genres (documentary, asian cinema, anime). They always seem to have a few of the titles I’m looking for, but not all of them. Anime series sometimes have all but one disc in a series. Very annoying.
Thus, I decided to supplement my existing “3 at a time” Netflix account with a basic account at GreenCine. GreenCine works on the same basic premise as Netflix and Blockbuster, but they specialize in independant, arthouse, and niche films. So far I’ve been fairly pleased with the service. Their search engine leaves a bit to be desired, as I often get a bunch of seemingly unrelated titles even if I enter in an exact title name, and have to sift through to find what I was originally looking for.
I havn’t looked too deeply into the seemingly quite robust community aspect of the site. They have a fair amount of articles with actors, directors, etc, which makes it seem a lot like a film magazine with a video rental service.
As for the service itself, it can best be described as somewhat above average considering the circumstances. They do not have the clout of big companies like Netflix to get contracts with the Postal Service, so I’m sure they pay more for shipping out videos. The envelopes that the DVDs come in simply have regular stamps affixed to them for postage, so they must pay regular pricing, which by the looks of my envelope is about $1 in stamps. They also don’t have the distribution network that Netflix does, so I think all of their shipments come from California. Living in Michigan this means that if I watch a movie the day I receive it, and send it out the next day, it will be a week before I see my next one, but at $10 a month that basically means I pay about $2.50 per rental, which is still comparable to any neighborhood video rental store, but with a better selection. Also, considering they’re paying nearly a dollar for shipping, and who knows how much for employee salaries, etc, I would think that any less than $2.50 per rental would mean they would be making almost nothing in profit. Certainly not enough to stay in business. One small difference that stands out above Netflix is that GreenCine’s DVDs ship with an extra cardboard sleeve to protect the disc, which I’m sure cuts down on customers receiving damaged discs, as well as them having to replace broken DVDs.
Personally the price isn’t a big issue for me, since I’m only paying $10 a month to get some films that Netflix just does not carry. The turnover time between rentals could be a bit better too, but since I have enough Netflix movies to watch in the interim times that also isn’t a huge deal. Any more films and I’d end up getting sick of watching movies all day just so I could keep up with the flow. My biggest (and it still isn’t that big) gripe is the search engine on the site. It could be a lot more precise I think, but I haven’t had to bad a time finding what I’m looking for. If they had the extensive recommendation features that Netflix does it would also be nice.
Netflix has also openly admitted to “throttling” customers who are too quick with their returns of films in order to keep their bottom line. While I can understand the concept behind it, it still stinks. When I send in two movies at the same time, and they email me the next day saying only one arrived…well let’s just say it makes me a bit suspicious. I’m sure the amount of people who hold on to movies for a few days is enough to augment the users who are optimizing their turnover rate. As far as I can tell GreenCine has never been accused of this.
