There are two types of people in the internet world; people who don’t rent DVDs on-line and hard-core “Oh-my-God, I love NetFlix” types. For a long time the only real option for on-line movie rentals was NetFlix. Well, for those of you who are considered getting that NetFlix tattoo, I’d hold off on that trip to the parlor and check out GreenCine.
GreenCine is a San Francisco based DVD rental company that specializes in genres that may be hard to find on NetFlix. In addition to the regular genres that your friendly, neighborhood Blockbuster carries, GreenCine’s genres have fun/realistic titles like Comic Books, Cult, Espionage, Biopics and Quest to name a few. New DVD titles aren’t highlighted on their web-site, but they’re in there. I did a side-by-side comparison and found many, but not all, of the same new releases that the competition has on their site. Another notable difference between GreenCine and NetFlix is the adult-targeted materials. GreenCine refers to it as “BlueCine”.
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There are two types of people in the internet world; people who don’t rent DVDs on-line and hard-core “Oh-my-God, I love NetFlix” types. For a long time the only real option for on-line movie rentals was NetFlix. Well, for those of you who are considered getting that NetFlix tattoo, I’d hold off on that trip to the parlor and check out GreenCine.
GreenCine is a San Francisco based DVD rental company that specializes in genres that may be hard to find on NetFlix. In addition to the regular genres that your friendly, neighborhood Blockbuster carries, GreenCine’s genres have fun/realistic titles like Comic Books, Cult, Espionage, Biopics and Quest to name a few. New DVD titles aren’t highlighted on their web-site, but they’re in there. I did a side-by-side comparison and found many, but not all, of the same new releases that the competition has on their site. Another notable difference between GreenCine and NetFlix is the adult-targeted materials. GreenCine refers to it as “BlueCine”.
Besides renting DVDs, GreenCine also offers its members two other options for watching movies. Video-On-Demand (VOD) and DivX downloads.
Microsoft’s Windows Media Player is required to watch the VOD titles and most Macs should be able to run the latest version. The DivX download option requires their “special” DivX player and is a Windows-only app so us Mac-folk are out of luck. In either case the pricing structure changes to $4.99-per-movie and you can watch it as many times as you wish for 10-days. BlueCine tiles have a 30-day rental period. Go figure.
Besides selection most of us are also concerned with customer service. I searched GreenCine’s site for any type of phone number, but I found nothing. (Not too uncommon for an internet company.) GreenCine sends out e-mail alerts when they send out a DVD and when they receive a DVD that you’ve returned. The weekly newsletter is nice, but like most of my mail, I never really read it. I did have one DVD get lost in the mail, but after a quick e-mail to Customer Support, they replied the same day saying that they were sorry and the replacement DVD was on its way. The correspondence was polite, friendly and courteous. They didn’t make me feel like I had to convince them that the DVD was lost. I can’t really say anything about the VOD and DivX titles since that’s not a service I would use. Maybe there’s a market for that. I don’t know.
So I’ve been hooked up with GreenCine for the last month and a half and I can say that the experience has been cool. Unfortunately, they don’t have the 20 gagillion distribution centers that NetFlix has so I had to wait a whole 2-days to get my title. Being a documentary-whore, I like the selection that they offer and to me the extra buck or two is worth the variety.
Since everything now-a-days has a rating system, I give GreenCine 4 out of 5 stars. GreenCine isn’t trying to be the next NetFlix, they’re just trying to create an “Alternate Scene”.
Here are some hard facts about GreenCine:
Range of DVD’s
25,000+
Monthly Price
$9.95 – 1 DVD
$14.95 – 2 DVD’s
$21.95 – 3 DVD’s
$27.95 – 4 DVD’s
$33.95 – 5 DVD’s
$49.95 – 8 DVD’s
$59.95 – 10 DVD’s
Free Trial Period
2-weeks
