Junk Food For The Soul

While I admit I was late to the game, I have become a Netflix fan. While I rarely rent movies, I do occasionally like to watch a new release here and there or maybe an oldie that I never would take the time to go to the store and rent. Netflix is great for that. Oh, and I absolutely love watching old TV shows on DVDs from Netflix. Great way to pass the time on a rainy Saturday.

One of the other reasons I like Netflix is my desire to help the little guys. I’ve never wanted to rent from Blockbuster - never even had a membership. They are the big corporate guys. Netflix was this small upstart that, while it’s certainly grown and become the big name in online rentals, is still very small compared to Blockbuster.

However, as is often the case, principles go out the window for a good deal. And the new deal from Blockbuster has prompted me to get a membership and sign up for their online service.

With Blockbuster’s new “Total Access” plan, you can take any of your online rentals back to one of their stores and turn it in for a free in-store rental. That works well for me. I can still get the Netflix-style service of an online queue of movies that arrive every few days in the mail. But if I decide on the drive home that I’d really like to catch that new release that I let slip out of the theaters without seeing, I can just grab one of the DVDs that I haven’t dropped back in the mail yet and head to my local Blockbuster.

I’m now a few days into the new service and so far, so good. I haven’t canceled Netflix yet just in case, but I’m getting close. The movies seem to arrive fairly quickly. They aren’t quite as fast as I think they should be, but Netflix isn’t anymore either. (They’re quick when you’re a new customer, and slow down after you’ve been in a while.)

I don’t like Blockbuster’s site quite as much as Netflix, but it’s not bad. And the Netflix queue page has been acting crazy in Firefox lately anyway. Blockbuster is really lacking when it comes to recommending other movies that it thinks I would like, both when I ask it to and when I add another movie to my queue.

If I go to the Rush Hour 2 page and click the “Similar Movies” button, shouldn’t the original Rush Hour be among the choices? And if I have clicked on the “don’t show me this movie again” button in the ratings (multiple times now), why does it keep recommending Schindler’s List? Lastly, why do they keep recommending movies that are already in my queue?

These little things aside, I am ashamed to say that Blockbuster has me a customer for a while. Hopefully they won’t screw it up.