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 Busy Bee DVD was launched in June 2005 and remains a solid choice for DVD rental, albeit the bottom of the three Irish rental providers. It's not that there are many complaints about Busy Bee, just that it's a smaller outfit with a less technically-saavy website and extras. If you're not bothered by that, then it remains a viable choice.
The website looks a bit dated and simple by comparison to Screenclick and Moviestar, but this no frills cover masks a solid rental engine, with considerable information, for instance, 19 genres, and plenty of film lists, like Top 100 - Channel 4, Top 20 Irish, Top Rentals of 2006--you get the picture. One surprise is the strength of their search engine, better than those of the top two companies, allowing searches on title, keyword, actor, director, even dropdown categories of top actors as well as studios. OK, most people may not use those advanced functions, but it's nice to know they're there.
The actual title information pages are quite good in terms of long descriptions, but the lack of hyperlinking like the other two Irish sites for director and actors is a minor downside. Each title should ideally also have basic listings like age certificate, studio, running time, year released, etc. Also, though Busy Bee DVD allows customer reviews, they're effectively hidden at first and a bit clunky to get to. First you have to click on reviews at the bottom of the page (why they just don't show up in full like the other services we don't know), then you see a list of reviews and actually have to click on each one--simply too many clicks to be useful, which is a pity, as this would be an easy site design issue to fix.
Busy Bee lists inventory size as 15,000 films, though far fewer than major US and UK firms with 50,000+, and probably far less than Irish competitors Screenclick and Moviestar, which claims 25,000. Yes, Busy Bee too claim to have "Ireland's biggest DVD library," though two of the three companies are clearly wrong about this claim. That said, this is probably enough films for the mainstream viewer, with plenty of choice, unless your interests are very niche, say arthouse, or international films, or anime/manga, etc.
Busy Bee DVD is 100% Irish-owned, and run by a team with over 25 years experience in the Irish video market, led by Managing Director is Peter O'Mahony.
Note that to cancel, you simply email Busy Bee, though all of your DVDs must be back in with them to do so. This can be tricky in practice, as if you return the films early--they may just ship more out to you; to avoid this we suggest customers remove all films from their queue before sending back the final batch of DVD. Again, problems canceling DVD rental subscriptions (and getting charged for an extra month you don't use) are the most common problems across the industry, so best follow their instruction quite closely.
Prices: Busy Bee DVD has a 14-day free trial for their 2 DVD unlimited tariff only, before you commit to subscribing. They have three unlimited rental tariffs: oddly, their single DVD tariff is the cheapest in Ireland, while the other tariffs are actually the most expensive in the country. A single DVD out-at-a-time rental package is €12.95 per month (a mere 9.95 for the first month), two-discs out for €24.95, and their four-disc package is €34.95. It seems odd they're missing a three-disc subscription, which is, across international DVD rental markets, the most popular option.
For price comparison, assuming even a modest rate of watching only one DVD per week (you should be able to turn them around slightly faster depending on the swiftness of post to your area), you'd pay an average of €3.08 per disc on the one-disc package, €2.97 per disc for the two-disc plan, and €2.73 per disc for the most popular four-disc plan; far cheaper than in any rental store.
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Rental Basics