DVD Review

If you are a avid movie fan then you probably enjoy renting DVD movies. However, renting online rather than shops is fast becoming the most popular method for movie lovers. If you are unsure of renting your DVD movies on the internet, then here is a quick guide to doing so.
The Cost of Online Rentals
There are many different online rental services available, and the costs will always vary. They all offer various different packages and membership levels to suit different needs and budgets. For example, you may choose the lowest membership price which allows you to rent one DVD movie at a time. You may also find the most expensive packages allow you to rent perhaps 8-10 or even an unlimited number of DVD movies a month.
Waiting for Your Movie
Perhaps online DVD movie rental does not seem like a good idea due to the waiting times. However, you can choose your rental picks up to months in advance and the service will deliver them whenever you have a free rental slot open. This will work out even more speedy than rental stores, as you will no longer have to drive to pick up your titles or worry about them being in stock. Most services will use fast shipping to make sure your DVD movies are always delivered on time.
Watch Movies Instantly
Though all movies can be delivered as DVDs, rental services nowadays are also offering instant online movie viewing. This means that you do not need to wait for your disc to arrive in the mail. Rather you can start watching movies at the click of a button! The number of movies you can watch as part of your membership will vary, as will the movie titles available via this method.
Buy Discounted DVDs
As well as rentals, most online services will also give you the option to purchase DVDs directly from their website. You can usually make big savings here since these DVD movies have been used before and as such are greatly reduced in price. You could be saving around half the cost of the brand new DVD, which is great if you come across a movie that you feel like watching over and over again.
Movie Reviews and Recommendations
Movie rental services can even send you personalised recommendations to help you discover new movies. This is great for movie lovers, though if you want to choose the movies yourself then simply read the reviews to decide on which movies to watch. These sites benefit from both official and user reviews to help you make your decision. Online reviews and rental services can really open your eyes to movies you would never have considered before.
As you can see, there are many benefits to using an online DVD movie rental service over a traditional store, and it is extremely easy to get started and benefit from the great choice available! Many of these rental services even offer a free trial so you can decide for yourself whether the service is right for you.

Get Blu rays and DVD’s up to 70% cheaper by visiting http://www.bluraydvd.co.za

When Blu ray has hit the shelves, we saw many classic and older movies being released ob Blu ray. One of my first Blu rays was Dracula. After viewing this Blu ray, I thought and talked to friends about the difference between Blu ray and DVD. Many commentators out there will say, “Why bother with Blu ray”. These older films do not show a clear improvement on DVD, but believe me it is there. I could clearly see Dracula’s red coat in more detail and color than on the DVD.  Still, watching more recently shot Films do make a much more eye-catching difference and high definition experience.

“Dracula was first released to DVD in 1999 and again as a Superbit DVD in 2001. Neither release contained any extra features. A two-disc “Collector’s Edition” DVD and Blu-ray was released in 2007. The “Collector’s Edition” special features, identical on both the DVD and Blu-ray releases, include an introduction and audio commentary by director Francis Ford Coppola, deleted and extended scenes, teaser and full-length Dracula trailers, and the documentaries “The Blood Is the Life: The Making of Dracula”, “The Costumes Are the Sets: The Design of Eiko Ishioka”, “In Camera: The Naïve Visual Effects of Dracula”, and “Method and Madness: Visualizing Dracula”. (wikipedia(

The bottom line of this story is that you will be able to find some of these older classics for cheaper now. I got five of them for 70% cheaper than they are marked in stores. Visit www.bluraydvd.co.za for more info.

Another bottom line, compare for yourself by experimenting between the different choices available.

Jack

VHS sure had it easy. 20 years ago, VHS battled Betamax in a winner-take-all contest that created a home video revolution. It was a simpler time then. The only real formats for home viewing were battling each other head to head. VHS won the battle against Sony’s Beta format and the rest is history.

Fast-Forward to the High-Def Revolution. Blu-ray Disc (Sony) battles out HD DVD (Toshiba). Blu-ray Disc triumphs when Toshiba throws in the proverbial towel on February 2008. Now Blu-ray is the clear winner and will go on to international fame and fortune, right? Not so fast.

Blu-ray Disc ran into a number of issues, the first being their pricing. When DVD first started competing with VHS, they had a price point that made a lot of sense. It didn’t take long for the players to get cheap. As for the discs, well, DVDs were just really cool CDs. No problem. Not the case for Blu-ray, however. They’ve faced numerous issues getting hardware down to consumer price points. It doesn’t help that the discs are more expensive to manufacture, driving the average cost of movies up about $10 per title.

The newest factor to Blu-ray adoption, however, is yet another option for consumers. Online movie downloads are starting to gain momentum just as Blu-ray was starting to get some traction. As recently as last year, it seemed that online downloads wouldn’t be viable for a number of reasons (including licensing issues and quality concerns). Now major sites are starting to invest in the technology and consumers are taking rapid interest.

Take Netflix, for example. They now have over 12,000 titles available to subscribers via their ‘Instant Watch’ catalog. That’s not quite the (over) 100,000 titles in their standard catalog, but it’s a huge leap forward in a short amount of time. Amazon has gotten into the game as well. They now boast a catalog of over 15,000 on demand titles. The Amazon titles are either rented or bought, but in many cases are available on the same date as the DVD release.

With the addition of services such as the Netflix API, applications are starting to form around these services. One service from DVDCorral.com allows users to search online movies from a number of different catalogs. These services are making it easier and easier for consumers to find the media they’re looking for. That removes just one more hurdle that was plaguing online movie watchers a year ago.

Feedflicks.com is a service based on the Netflix API which tracks trends in Netflix rentals.  According to the Feedflicks site, this is the first year that Netflix Instant Watch movies (the Netflix version of online movie downloads) have exceeded physical DVD rentals.  Furthermore, the number of Instant Watch movies viewed this year has already exceeded last year’s count.  Clearly more and more people are choosing for the convenience of watching a movie online.

Consumers don’t have to suffer on quality, either. Amazon’s downloads are available in the Microsoft VC-1 format — known among Videophiles for its remarkable quality. The Amazon titles aren’t quite at the quality of Blu-ray, but apparently it’s close enough for viewers who want their media on demand.  Being instant and having a similar quality to DVD certainly makes it an appealing choice.

A recent surge in media centers has also changed how online media can be watched. Netflix has integrated with Xbox360, Tivo and a number of other systems which can play video directly to a TV. No longer is online video restricted to a computer monitor inside a cramped office. Every day it gets easier to stream online video to a TV or home theater.  Most online retailers are doing the same and some have even started including support for mobile devices.

Despite this growth in on demand video, Blu-ray Disc continues to increase in sales. This has been helped, in part, by more affordable players reaching the market throughout 2009. Blu-ray is projected to continue on an aggressive growth path and they’ve been right on schedule so far. So, could we be seeing the first time in home video history where two formats are able to successfully co-exist?

As it turns out, some of the media players which can stream Netflix ‘Watch Instantly’ titles are actually Blu-ray players. Maybe there will be peaceful co-existence after all.