Mail-order movies

By Eric Griffith

If you're a hard-core movie buff, you can always rent DVDs at your local video store. You'll have to hope the store has what you want, though, and deal with potential late fees.

Enter DVD subscription services like Netflix, with more than 10,000 titles, or Rentmydvd.com, with 12,000 titles. The concept is simple: You sign up for a monthly membership plan and choose a list of movies you want to see. Netflix or Rentmydvd.com then sends you a few DVDs by mail. How many they send at one time depends on your plan. Here's the best part: Watch each film at your convenience, and return it whenever you want -- no late fees -- in a prepaid envelope. Once a movie is returned, the service sends the next available film in your rental queue.

"I like that I don't have to go get the movie, go out to return the movie and watch it on someone else's timeline," says Netflix user Joseph Moran of Somerset, N.J. "Some movies from Netflix I watch in a day or two, others I hang on to for weeks."

With a DVD subscription service, you pay a monthly fee to get between two and 10 discs at a time. Netflix's three-disc plan is $19.95 per month; Rentmydvd.com's four-disc plan is $23.95 per month. Shipping is included -- DVDs come with prepaid envelopes for returns.

If you watch movies the minute you get them and return the DVDs posthaste, you could see as many as 12 movies a month -- that's less than $2 per rental. The mail can work against you, however. Netflix shipments from its San Jose, Calif., distribution center typically took five days to reach Boston, so turnaround time on one movie was a minimum of 10 days. Rentmydvd.com has distribution centers in California and New Jersey.

Occasional renters should probably stick with the local store. But for serious movie buffs on a budget, these services are nirvana.