Talk:DVD-by-mail

general survey article

To allow this to remain a general survey article, I've moved the list of companies from here to their own article - List of online DVD rental companies. David Oberst 23:27:18, 2005-09-05 (UTC)

Technical Video Rental

Given that there is a Wikipedia page for Technical Video Rental (one that conforms to the corporate template, too), I think that it actually belongs in the country section where it was originally, not in the external links section.

What are your thoughts for moving it away? Let's talk it out.

(If there's no response here after a few days, I'll assume that it wasn't a deeply held opinion, and I'll move it back)

-- Tjic

original preference

My original preference was to eventually have each country section give a short overview of the market dynamics and peculiarities, indicate the major players, and provide a link to an external source for complete lists if possible. Otherwise the lists become very long (the UK could be almost 40 including all the "powered by" variations), and it becomes a market guide instead of a reference article. The US section was inherited from the Netflix article, and I was hesitant to tread too heavily and reformat the individual listings until I had some idea of what to do with them. I'm not sure if it is current or complete (I'm Canadian).

It may be that people would prefer to have complete lists of all companies within Wikipedia (especially as there may not be convenient and accurate external lists for all areas). Perhaps a separate article along the lines of "Complete list of DVD rental companies" (although this may be bad form) could perform this function, allowing the country sections here to be simpler summaries. Or instead of a separate article, perhaps the section could be retitled "Summary by Country" (or "Region"). I've revised the article in this direction - comments anyone? The doubled regions in the in the "Contents" box is unfortunate, but I think perhaps prefereable to having to scroll through large numbers of companies to read each country summary. I'll check into suppressing these, or some other visual tweak.

TVR seemed interesting enough that I wanted to keep a reference to it, but didn't want to duplicate it in both US and Canada, and start down the path to listing the entire Canadian market (it could probably go as high as 18 depending on what is counted!). There wasn't any sort of "Specialty rentals" section, so I moved it to External for the nonce. If the "full company list" approach (in whatever form) is retained, then of course it can be listed in the appropriate sections.

Also, hopefully people will contribute to expanding the "How it works section", which is largely as I found it. David Oberst 07:28, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

I'm starting to create a full list of companies here, in hopes of eventual ideas on where they should go, what format, etc. The raw list seems large and out of place in a reference article, and doesn't provide enough useful information about the companies for a guide.

couple of the reference sites

I put back in a couple of the reference sites removed by Rhobite's edit. Full disclosure - the "dvdinfo.ca" site for Canada is my own, and I'll remove it if a consensus forms here. However, I created it solely to provide information on Canadian DVD rentals, and there is no advertising or partner referrals of any kind. The "onlinedvdrentalguide.ca" site (not affiliated with me, although they use my inventory estimates in their ratings) does put referrals in the links on its list of companies, but does so agnostically so for all companies that have such a scheme, and the message forums there are probably the single most useful resource for anyone interested in knowing more about the Canadian companies. I also put the "DVDrr.com" link back in - it was the handiest single source for info on all the English-speaking companies, and seems quite un-opinionated (although it does have a few affilate links for the UK companies. My intent was to try and provide links to useful outside info for each country, while avoiding shill sites, etc. I'd welcome comments. David Oberst 16:26, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

I strongly disagree with your decision to link to your own site. I also don't think dvdrr should be linked, since they make money off of referrals. Rhobite 16:31, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

Out of curiosity, do you think my content on "dvdinfo.ca" isn't a relevant link for the article, or is it just a "bad appearences" factor at linking to my own site? There isn't much I can do about the latter, but as for the former, I'd like to think that the inventory information and some of the tools would be considered useful for anyone wanting "more information" on the Canadian companies. I can certainly attest that there is absolutely no commercial or financial component involved! As for the sites that use affiliate referral links, my general view is that I don't really have a problem if they don't bias or influence the presentation and content of an otherwise highly useful site, which seems to be the case for onlinedvdrentalguide.ca and dvdrr.com (I've seen some "review" sites that only list companies that provide affliate revenues, for instance). For wikipedia links perhaps a complete "no linking to any site whatsoever that contains referral links" is necessary, but it would be a shame to not give readers a chance to access otherwise acceptable resources.David Oberst 17:41, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

I like the content of your site, but I don't think site owners should ever link their own sites from Wikipedia articles, even if they are good resources. I realize that the content on external review sites like dvdrr may be useful to readers, but these sites are a dime a dozen and I don't think Wikipedia should link to sites whose main goal is affiliate revenue. Another problem is spammers will come along and say "dvdrr is linked, so why can't I link my own site?" I would rather just link to the proper listing on dmoz and let readers decide for themselves. Rhobite 18:59, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

Package DVD rentals

The author mentions "package" programs, but fails to give examples. Actually, there are no examples for any of the listed programs. This probably needs to be included. {subst:unsigned|02:13, 5 August 2006|Mrskippy}}

The two I know about are RelayRentals and CineDVDMax in Canada, both quite small. Since I'm Canadian myself I was hoping to find an example from another country, but if I can't I'll make a mention of them. - David Oberst 04:19, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

Prepaid and DVD2order.com

I've removed the following paragraph for now:

"Pre-Paid"

New to online movie renting is the ability to pre-pay for your dvd rentals. Pre-paid rentals means you can hold onto your movies longer. With other plans, such as unlimited, you have to return one movie to get another from your list. With Pre-Paid memberships you pay a certain amount each month to recieve movies from your personal list and you'll keep getting movies from your list with no concern of sending one out the next day, just to get another. That's the idea behind pre-paid memberships. You'll have to send movies out less often and be rest assured that you'll be getting movies in the mail on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis depending on which type of "Pre-Paid" plan you choose. [1]

This has been inserted by User:68.83.125.207, who would appear to be doing promotional work for DVD2order.com, whose article (created by User:DVD2ORDER was recently speedy-deleted as advertising. It currently reads like (badly written) promotional copy - obviously the movies sent must be returned at some point, and the connection between returns and movies sent, and the basis for "hold onto your movies longer" is completely unclear. The DVD2order website currently has broken links for any of the "how it works" on the Prepaid plan, and is not currently accepting signups or providing details on this plan. I would suggest that the people involved with what appears to be a startup business concentrate on that, rather than using Wikipedia to jump-start their advertising. - David Oberst 04:19, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

Ireland

I ran into multiple versions of a news story that LoveFilm purchased Irish firm Screenclick early in 2006. However, Lovefilm's sight, which describes its operations in Germany and Scandinavia, and its whitelabel partnerships in the UK, makes no mention of Screenclick or Ireland. Did this deal fall through (although I can find no source for this). "Lovefilm.ie", which the stories speculated would be the new branding for Screenclick, actually redirects to Busy Bee (hijacked?)? - David Oberst

I also note that there is onlinedvdrentals.ie which I assume is a competitor of screeclick but not mentioned. --Gramscis cousin (talk) 12:27, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

Niche companies:

Acording to Oberst:...Undid revision 132620244 by Lostinlodos ...niche companies not needed in overview, etc.) Just because I'm curious! I'm not sure why you would undo the two additions I added whilst leaving the "Content edited" group. There are only two or three censored DVD rental companies. That constitutes a niche just as much as the others. NetFlix may have been the template on which the industry was built, but eHit.com opened the door for ALL niche companies that came after them. I figured that that would be substantial enough to include them. What do you all think? Lostinlodos 08:08, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

No offense intended. There used to be a (now-deleted) List of Online DVD companies article, but this one is merely attempting to give a brief overview of each market. Is there something especially notable about eHit, which doesn't have an article of its own? The content-edited stuff at least ties in to a separate article, involves issues of copyrights, lawsuits, etc. If anything, I'd be tempted to rewrite the paragraph to get rid of the explicit mention of GameznFlix, except that I'm not sure if there are any other online video game rental companies that do movies. - David Oberst 14:57, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

I believe the most notable thing about eHit.com would be they were the first to lock a target audience, a niche, if you will. And they survived. When they popped onto the scene in 2000; they were the only one to do that. Everyone else came later. They were also the first to filter previously rented/rated movies from the catalogue; something most companies adopted later on. Depending on where you look, they're the third or forth busiest (customer:rental average) company behind NetFlix, Blockbuster, and from some sources Adult DVD Empire. I'm for keeping GamznFlix as I agree I can't find any other paired service. However; if edited/censored movies are to be discussed, it should probably get its own paragraph over the controversy and mention BlockBuster's special/exclusives that are also content edited. Along with that, they are a quick-fail side of the industry; so they are notable, 'though not representative of the industry as a whole. Not sure why the list of companies was killed off after it was spun away from this article, but it would probably benefit to re-add it back to this article. Beyond that; I'll see over the weekend how much NOR I can pull together for a few other companies, including eHit.com and GamznFlix, and put together or expand the entries about them. Thoughts? Lostinlodos 11:43, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

Removed advertising. IntelliFlix

IntelliFlix offers nothing that was not offered by others before it. Not unique enough to fall into encyclopaedic classification for inclusion in this article. Lostinlodos (talk) 11:40, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

Add this？

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GreenCine —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.95.160.55 (talk) 05:50, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

Name change

I changed the name. It now includes Blu-ray. Please do not change it. Thank You!!! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Chris1294 (talk • contribs) 20:35, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

This name is improper, and should, if it must include HD formats, be "Online DVD and Blu-ray Rental" as NO CURRENT MAJOR COMPANY USES BLU-RAY AS A PRIMARY PRODUCT. I would propose Online Video Rental or Video-By-Mail, or something to that effect instead. Lostinlodos (talk) 23:06, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

Im just updating this as technology updates. Blu-ray will eventually be the primary product, just as DVD replaced VHS. I think online movie rental would be the BEST choice. THANK YOU!! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Chris1294 (talk • contribs) 16:12, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

Do NOT include HDDVD and VCD

Do NOT include HDDVD and VCD, they are discontinued!!!!!

HD-DVD is still supported by some Eastern companies, and still available for rent from NetFlix, Cineflix, et al. VCD is still available from many companies including Cineflix, Family Video, Starz, eHit, CineFilm, CleanFilm, .... I follow your reasoning on the updates and removals, but as long as they're available, they should be noted. Lostinlodos (talk) 16:37, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

An fyi;Cleanfilm and cineflix are no longer in business. Cinflix is in biz, but not sure that they carry VCD.Jehosaphatz (talk) 04:03, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

Point taken but I will point to these: [2] and everyone renting HD-DVDs from NetFlix got an email stating "While we will continue to make our current selection of HD DVD titles available to you for the next several months, we will not be adding additional HD DVD titles or reordering replacements." and that they would continue to offer them through atleast the end of this year (2009). A quick google will show that.

HDDVD AND VCD are both dead formats ---there is no use in including them in this article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.99.199.50 (talk) 03:36, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

As long as they continue to be made available for rent they should be included for completeness. "Dead" is a relative term. Lostinlodos (talk) 05:38, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

Cleanup request

I recommended this article for cleanup. Many cos out of biz, needs citations in spots, and dead links need help. Please help me in cleaning thi article.Jehosaphatz (talk) 04:08, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

Removed out of biz cos and rental software providers. Changed tone in US section; toned down uncited ref of adultdvdempire being the largest and added goflix.com as another adult only company. fixed spelling and grammer. Updated netflix customer counts and added ref to netflix 2008 annual report.Jehosaphatz (talk) 06:29, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

Nice work. Only change I made (if you missed it) was that there are only three restaurants with RedBox units; so I reverted the i.e. back to a flat-tone statement. Otherwise great work. Lostinlodos (talk) 18:54, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

Thanks Lostinlodos. I removed a parenthesis that was stranded in that same paragraph. In addition, I re-wrote that sentence regarding kiosks to make it a smoother and more wikified read. Question: In your opinion, should there be an external link or other reference to companies such as adultdvdempire that don't have their own wikipedia articles?Jehosaphatz (talk) 05:23, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Probably. If you go back a ways in the history you'll find that I had tried to deal with this before, as to how to recognize the red links, and who should and should not be included. Honestly I believe some of these companies need their own articles, but I've been shot down on that idea before. There also used to be a list of online rental companies (which I think should be brought back) where they all resided in their own little one-paragraph entries. For quite a few months (years?) a few of these company's own articles and this page have been quite a mess of fandom; everyone was a general and no one wanted to listen to others. Things have now finally begun to calm down on this article.
For the time being; direct links to the external sites for redlinks should do until I can find a cache of the old "list of" file and attempt to rebuild it. You've been a nice change of pace from the past. Hope you can keep going and we can all just be happy!? Lostinlodos (talk) 05:36, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

I was just looking for that list you mentioned, do you have a link to the history or the deletion discussion? It seems odd that it would be taken down - and the US section on this page reads like an ad. It feels like a heavy hand is working on this topic...99.141.246.60 (talk) 21:58, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

Video Mailbox

Here's an article with brochures and a YouTube advertizement from the 80s company "Video Mailbox," which was like Netflix. http://www.hackingnetflix.com/2009/08/was-video-mailbox-the-first-moviesbymail-rental-company.html Included in the comments are some details by the founder. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.99.28.223 (talk) 17:36, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

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