Online Movie Rental Reviews- How Does Blockbuster Compare to Netflix?

Now more than ever before, Blockbuster is making it easy to rent movies online. And is trying to catch up with its main competitor, Netflix.

In 2004, Blockbuster started offering customers its own service for online movie rentals. Before that, the only way to rent movies online was through Netflix, and Netflix was making mince meat of the traditional brick-and-mortar movie rental stores.

For example, Hollywood Video, which was once condidered a leader in the industry, has seen it's business go down since online movie rentals came along.

Lucky for Blockbuster, they were able to adapt to the changing landscape of the online movie rental business fast enough to stay in business.

What does Blockbuster offer that the others don't? Today, it's Netflix that has to do some catching up to Blockbuster. Blockbuster customers can rent on Blu-Ray at no extra cost. Netflix charges extra for this benefit.

The other major advantage Blockbuster has over Netflix is its brick-and-mortar stores. While traditional retail outlets seemed at first to be an old-fashioned handicap for people looking for movies to rent, today Blockbuster markets their stores as an added perk that Netflix doesn't have.

And it's true: with 7,000 stores in 21 countries, Blockbuster makes it easy to return movies locally.

So if a customer feels like renting a movie for the weekend but doesn't want to venture out to the store, they can rent online from Blockbuster, then drop it by the store on their way to work on Monday morning.

Blockbuster also offers one more benefit over Netflix: game rentals. Netflix doesn't offer game rentals but does have a wide variety of movies and TV shows on offer.

Blockbuster's inventory has long included video games, so it was a natural choice to include game rentals when Blockbuster started offering online movie rentals.

To rent 1, 2 or 3 movies at one time costs the same. The fixed monthly charges are $8.99, $13.99 and $16.99.

Do these options make Blockbuster better than Netflix? That depends upon your perspective. If you're a Blu-ray owner, then yes, it's better to rent movies online from Blockbuster.

If you're a gamer, then yes, it's better to rent movies online from Blockbuster.

If all you're looking for a good selection of movies and don't mind mailing DVDs back to Netflix, then the two services are basically equal.

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