Over two years ago I wrote "Netflix busts Blockbuster, or the Changing Economy". Over a year ago I wrote "Little box vs. BIG BOX (Videos)". I meant to write some follow-on articles about little boxes vs BIG boxes, such as drug stores, hardware stores, book stores, camera stores, and others. But I never did. Now about the only little boxes left are hair salons and restaurants. And the individual entrepreneurs in these have to compete with big chains.
I was also remiss in noting that almost every movie rental store in Duluth has closed. The last convenient movie rental, Mr. Movies, closed because they could not renew their lease on their terms. For me this was unfortunate because Mr. Movies had a good selection of foreign films, including some classics.
Now our choices for movies are DVD by mail or DVD by download. I shied away from Netflix because I didn't see paying ten bucks for one or two movies a month.
I did try downloading from iTunes and some other sources, but that is a two-hour wait at a nominal 7Mbps rate (more like 4Mbps actual). But at least twice, iTunes just hung up with 30 minutes or so left to download. I could restart the download and it would pick up at the hang-up point, but one shouldn't have to babysit a download.
Oh, yes, iTunes movies have subtitles that can't be turned off. Subtitles make it very hard to listen to the words being spoken.
We could stream DVDs, but that can be a jerky experience. And we can't stream at all at our cabin which has only 24Kbps. Even accessing the web has become a hassle at that speed.
We finally opted for Netflix, starting with the one DVD at a time program. The service has been excellent; I wrote about it in "Why do people pick on the Post Office?"
My latest choice is "The Hunger Games", which was released Saturday. I moved it to the top of our queue Sunday after I put the previous DVD in a mail box. Netflix told me "The Hunger Games" has been shipped and I should be receiving it tomorrow. That sure beats babysitting a download.
We do have a small problem. My wife doesn't care for movies with any violence, including murder mysteries. I wonder if she'll watch Miss Marple. So, I have to schedule watching such movies when she is gone or I'll be at the cabin alone. This, in turn, limits our shared watching. That sucked me into upping our Netflix account to two DVDs at a time. At about $12 a month, that beats one visit to a movie theater for both of us, or getting five DVDs a month from a store.
Has inflation changed the expression "nickel and dimed to death" to "ten dollared to death"?
I just hope this increased viewing doesn't reduce my book reading.
