| Whenever you join any online membership site, regardless of the focus, one of your concerns is whether or not you are getting good value for your money. It's not always easy to determine that value when you are looking at over 20 sites offering access to the same DVDs and flashing special offers at you. Of course, the obvious way to make sure you're getting real value for your money is to compare what you get for your monthly subscription with all the sites you are attracted to. Sounds easy, but it is very time consuming and a lot like wandering a maze blindfolded. Most of the rating systems use a star-based format for their ratings, five stars being the highest. Even if they are using the same star graphics for ratings, their opinions about value received is sometimes not even close, site to site. Another factor to consider is the "Powered by" sites that are essentially clones of the original, giving their home site a wider sphere of influence in this heavily competitive field. If you have an account at one of the clone sites, you cannot have an additional account on any of the others or take advantage of another free trial. Lovefilm for example, sell credits that you can use like money and IT IS your money, after all. One site sells credits in batches, £7.96 for four credits, £13.93 for seven credits or £19.90 for ten. Your credits can expire after 90 days, if you don't use them before the 90 days runs out. Be aware that some sites using credits do have a restricted number of days you can keep the DVDs and will charge you one credit if you are late. If you don't want to get tied up in credits or monthly fees, you can select one of the very few services that offer pay as you go. This avoids all added charges and having to deposit money in your account before you rent anything...perfect for the occasional DVD viewer. Getting back to the five star rating systems, you will have to look at those stars with critical eyes. On some rating sites it means that their raters believe that you were getting good value for your money. Unfortunately, that's not true of all of them. One site listed every online service several times, once for every variation in their offerings, like one rental a month and again for two rentals, etc. Using that technique, they had over 40 services rated at the 5-star level, which diluted their impact, if you noticed what they really are doing. There's so many options available through online DVD rental services that it is not an easy task to separate the real value from online hype. One way to get an opinion that's not based on an affiliation is to go to the forums made available on several of the ratings sites. It won't take long to find out the real value of joining any rental service. Just ask and stand back! |
> Online DVD Rental 
