LOVEDFiLM

I received an email a couple of weeks ago informing me that there were some “exciting upgrades and changes to your LOVEFiLM service”. I hate it when I get emails worded like this because it usually translates to “we are altering our terms and conditions and you are about to get shafted”. In fact the main change I could see is that they were renaming LOVEFiLM to the corporately monocultured “Amazon Prime Instant Video” and also bizarrely combining their film streaming service with their fast parcel delivery service. The latter appears to have made many people who used this rather irate.

Although I have used the video streaming service I use the LOVEFiLM DVD rental service far more. In fact the service still remains – buried deep into Amazon’s labyrinthine menu system. The reason for this is quite simple. There are far more disks available for rental than there are decent films to stream and it is the more obscure items that I really get the benefit from whether this is renting ancient foreign language films, DVDs of Doctor Who episodes from the 60s and 70s or more recent DVD collections of shows that have been on pay TV services but that have not really justified a subscription in themselves.

Prior to LOVEFiLM renting a film involved a trip to our local DVD rental shop. Our local independent still exists although most of the major chains have disappeared with an outmoded business model. From a customer perspective it seems like a world away – walking (or even driving) down to the shop and browsing around looking for the gem amongst the endless Z-rated schlock or simply hoping that they had enough copies of the latest blockbuster to make the trip worthwhile. More often enough it would be a case of weighing up two films that no-one had ever heard of and taking the punt that Brian Dennehy made a decent film every third movie. In a way this added to the entertainment because no-one knew exactly what film we would end up with and every so often we would end up with the “big” film everyone wanted to see.

Rental by post firms like LOVEFiLM seemed to spell the end for the rental chain but part of the attraction is the same. The rental lists are all things that we want to see but there is no telling as to what is actually going to arrive. However, the cost is much cheaper than the chain. Whereas our local rental shop used to do films for £3 per night or deals like 2 films for 2 nights for £5, LOVEFiLM do a subscription that effectively works out at 8 disks per month for £10. That’s pretty good value and with the choice being several tens of thousands rather than a few hundred there is a lot to choose from. However, with the latest announcement, I think the writing is on the wall for the DVD rental service. LOVEFiLM also used to rent video games but this service was stopped last year and whereas there were a myriad of DVD by post firms a few years ago, now there only appears to be one other – Cinema Paridiso. I suspect it is only a matter of time until Amazon kill off LOVEFiLM for good.

So what is the alternative. The streaming services can be very good but the limiting factor at the moment is choice. They may advertise thousands of films but in reality most of these are junk and even the quality of some of the things we do want to watch are questionable. I tried to watch the classic 1920s German Sci-Fi “Metropolis” on Amazon’s streaming service a few weeks ago but had to give up as the quality of the print was abysmal  - it looked more like a poorly realised pirate copy then a digitally re-mastered masterpiece. What Amazon do appear to be doing is making more content available to rent for a fee rather than included in the subscription and this is something that I would possibly go for – so long as I didn’t have to pay for a subscription as well. In fact this would move the service closer back to the model of the grubby video rental shop but without the worry about what would be in stock that day – and presumably avoiding two out of every three Brian Dennehy films.