Lazy Uni Student

The Intro:

Well I finally got there. I slaved away for the three people that read this site. Tirelessly watching movies. Just so you can make informed desicions. This is how I spent my friday nights. For you reader, yes you.

So sad.

Enough lament you say! I wanna see where my hard borrowed dollars are best directed for DVD convenience you say! Read on, I say.

The Guts:

Fatso

Very nice site. Easy to navigate. Groovy features like the ability to write user reviews and group management function, so if more than one person is using the service, you can individually select movies and Fatso will allocate the movies out fairly. Great for flats. The site also employs some sort of intuitive software that present you with recommendations based on what rating you give to movies. Fatso provides a return envelope for each DVD they provide. This means you can return just one dvd, or two or all three. Depends on your appetite.

My only criticism's with Fatso are; the dvds arrive in a mail friendly custom case with no documentation whatsoever, and the turnaround for delivery seemed maybe a day longer than Movieshack. I'm the kind of geek who like to read the back covers of movies while I'm watching them to glean as much useless information as I can. A complete lack of reading material was, well, disappointing.

Add the fact that long-time Bfm movie reviewer Stephen Grey provides reviews for the site, and you have yourself a winner.

Movieshack

Very similar website to Fatso's, perhaps a little simpler with no ability to search by director (a must for film geeks). The service is almost the same except the selection does not seem to be as comprehensive as Fatso's. The dvds come in a custom Movieshack cover, with a printout of the websites synopsis provided on the back cover. This also includes vital info like the runtime of the movie, so you can make those crucial 'should I wait till the movie finishes or should I pause now and go to the toilet' decisions which can be a blessing for those of us without Superman bladders. Like Fatso, Movieshack provides a return post paid envelope for each dvd.


DvdUnltd

Funny choice of URL for these people. Especially since they were first on to the New Zealand market. It's not like there is a shortage of .co.nz names is there? First time I plugged the name into my browser, I was greeted with the evil '404 File Not Found...' screen. Eventually I found the right URL. The one thing that really sets DVDUnltd apart is that it just doesn't come across as professional as the other two. The website seemed cluttered and slow to load. DVDUnltd Only provided two return envelopes, so you have to be strategic with when and how many dvd's you send back. But this never seemed to be a real problem.

However, the service is cheaper, at $35 per month for 3 dvds at a time. The selection is impressive, with more of the obscure movies turning up than on Movieshack, and nearly as good as Fatso's. DVDUnltd have taken a novel approach to the dvd packaging issue, by laminating the paper inserts from the original dvd packaging and attaching sleeves to the inside. So what you end up receiving is the original dvd cover squashed flat. Cool. Geeks like me appreciate this sort of thing. We can read the cover and acquire those important nuggets of trivia that otherwise we might miss out on.

The thing I liked most about DVDUnltd though, is the fact that they send out both dvd's of two disc sets as ONE disc. I received the E.T. special edition 2 disc set as one dvd. Nice. Fatso and Movieshack would treat them as two separate discs, taxing your three disc maximum.

The End:

Fatso has the best selection, and the nicest site. Movieshack has the lesser selection of the three but does have a nicer site than DVDUnltd. DVDUnltd has a very good selection, is cheaper, provides bonus discs without taxing your maximum discs, and supplies the dvd's with the original packaging, albeit laminated and squashed flat for the mail. So for me, DVDUnltd wins. Being a poor student, it works out to be the best DVD/Dollar ratio. Surprised me that's for sure. I had my money on Fatso, but I guess that's what slick marketing does to ya.