Kiss goodbye to late return fines

27 July 2005

by Emma Tyrrell

Fed up with forking out up to £4 every time you want to rent a film from your local video shop? Hacked off with paying the inevitable fines when you forget to take it back?

If you want cheaper prices, no fines, and a choice of tens of thousands of films, then you'll probably be tempted by online DVD rental.

There are well over a dozen different companies offering DVD rental, from supermarkets like Tesco and Sainsburys, through well-known video store name Blockbuster, to lesser known internet specialist firms like Screen Select, which claims to have the widest choice of DVDs in the UK – over 34,500 titles.

Compare DVD rental prices here

Typically you open an online account, make up a list of the movies you want to see, and then wait for the films to be sent out to you. Postage should be free, and your DVDs should come with a postage paid envelope for you to send them back.

But prices and flexibility vary. Choose the wrong service for you, from one of the pricier companies, and you could end up paying well over the odds

There are three basic offerings. First there are those which offer “unlimited” DVD rentals for a set monthly fee, allowing you one disc at a time for, say, £10 a month, two discs at a time for £12.50 a month, or three discs at a time for £15 a month. In reality, however, the number of discs you can receive is limited by the postal service. It could take four to five working days turn-around between the rental firm posting your DVDs out to you, and it receiving them back from you, assuming you are free to watch them the day they arrive. As a result, a one-disc-at-a time “unlimited” offer probably translates to a maximum of five DVD films a month. Tesco ( www.tescodvdrental.com ) and Sainsburys ( www.sainsburysdvdrental.co.uk ) are among the cheapest of the “unlimited” rental firms, each charging £7.97 for one disc at a time, £11.47 for two discs at a time or £13.97 for three at a time. Sainsburys also has a four DVDs-at-a-time offer, at £19.99 a month.

Another option, which can work out cheaper for light watchers, is offered by firms like dvds365.com and Amazon ( www.amazon.co.uk ). These firms offer services which limit both the number of DVDs you can have at any one time and the number you can have per month. A one-DVD-at-a-time offer from dvds365.com limits you to two discs a month and costs a monthly £5.99, (discounted to £3.99 in August), while a two-at-a-time, four-per-month offer costs £7.99 with both dvds.com and Amazon.

Dvds.com also offers lots of packages for major movie buffs. For example, its 4 star package, allows four DVDS at any one time, and up to 30 a month. At £21.99, however, it is more expensive than Sainsburys' four-at-a time unlimited package, so you'll only do better with dvds.com if their postal turnaround time ends being markedly quicker.

Probably the most flexible option for infrequent renters is pay per rental, which is offered expensively by Blockbuster ( www.blockbuster.co.uk ), and cheaply by easycinema ( dvd.easycinema.com ), run by the founder of easyjet, Stelios Haji-Ioannou . Unless you feel the Blockbuster service is worth the £4.50 per DVD you'll be paying for new release rentals (£3.50 for older titles), old Stelios is probably a better bet.

With easycinema you pay £1.99 per DVD, and buy credits in blocks of four, seven and 10. Buying a block of four credits, costing £7.96, allows you one film at a time, while buying blocks of seven or ten allows two-at-a-time or three-at-a-time. Credits have to be used up within 90 days or they are lost. Despite this, someone who felt they were likely to watch five films one month and none the next, would probably be better off paying per rental with easycinema, than signing up for any of the pay monthly offers.

Most companies allow you to prioritise your choices and say they will try and select from the top of your list, but you should be aware that you won't always get your top choice DVDs, particularly if they are new releases. In some instances, for example if all your choices are in heavy demand, you may even be kept waiting for a disc to be sent out – bad news if you are paying per month for an “unlimited” offer. The more film choices you add to your list, the less likely this is to happen.

If you're still unsure about which online DVD rental firm to go for, most companies offer a free trial. Screen Select offers a 21 day free trial or five free rentals, whichever ends first, while Tesco, Sainsburys, Lovefilm ( www.lovefilm.com ), and dvds.com, have a 14 day trial (Sainsburys offers a one month free trial on its £13.97 package). MSN ( www.msndvdrental.com ) offers 28 days free, or four DVDs, whichever comes first, while Blockbuster offers one month's free trial. After the free trial however, Blockbuster's is one of the more expensive “unlimited” offers, at £14.99 for three DVDs at a time.

Whichever you choose, it's likely you'll be kissing goodbye to those late return fines – only Blockbuster's pay-per-rental online service has a time limit.