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 Screenclick (formerly DVDrentals) is by far the largest, and in our opinion best, Irish DVD rental company, with 52,000+ customers. They don't disclose their title inventory--which appears vast after browsing--but note it is the largest number of any company in Ireland.
Films are listed in an impressive 18 genres (we've seen some international sites with as few as 7), which should help browsing considerably. These include the standard such as Action, Children, Thrillers, etc. as well as niches like Irish, Manga, World Cinema. You also search by title, director, and actor from a single box, though a minor quibble, we'd hope in future they develop a more advanced search engine with multiple fields including things like year, certificate, and description keyword. To be fair, they already allow you to display genre results by Title, Date Added, or Certificate.
We are very impressed with the breadth of their individual film listings. Screenclick lists stars, director, genre, and language, all hyperlinked so you can see other similar examples. Likewise, there's a recommendations section "Members who liked this film also rented ..."; very useful for uncovering new titles of interest. Finally, there is a facility for member reviews, useful to see what others thought of the film.
Delivery uses An Post--mailings generally go out at noon--and delivers to all 26 counties. They note 90% of all Irish post arrives within 24 hours, with the rest within 48 hours, often depending on where you live. As a plus, they email you when a disc is dispatched, so you know it's on the way and when to expect it.
We're impressed that Screenclick offers a customer support phone line (open 9-5), as most of the larger DVD rental companies in other countries do not. Also, they have a lenient policy regarding discs lost in the post--if you have not received a DVD four days after dispatch, notify them and they'll send a replacement, though if this happens multiple times they may terminate the account, as it should be very rare. You will have to fill out postal forms on the loss, which is fair enough in our opinion.
The site is far more than just DVD rental, and has some excellent content under the Member Zone tab, with competitions, polls, an ezine, and interesting articles on film. In addition to being just plain interesting, these will also give ideas about future films to add to your queue.
DVDrentals was established in 2001, and in January 2006 was acquired by international DVD rental giant Lovefilm for €3 million. Interestingly, they list some of their web statistics: as of early 2007 they received 230,000 visits per month from their 52,000+ members, looking at 2 million pages, staying on the site for an average of four minutes per visit.
Screenclick does operate a Fair Use Policy as stated in their Terms and Conditions; "to ensure a balanced experience for all our members ... we give priority to members who don't rent high numbers of discs." Basically, if you very quickly watch films and always send them back the next day, you'll find you aren't getting your top priority films (which may be going to subscribers who hang onto the DVDs for a few days and don't see as many--fair enough really) and you may find your turnaround time slow down, called throttling in the industry, but this should only affect high-volume users, so won't be a factor for the vast majority of subscribers.
You can cancel your subscription or free trial up to two working days before your next billing date, however, all DVDs must be back in Screenclick's possession before you do so; in fact they recommend you obtain a Certificate of Posting in case their are problems, as they do not offer partial subscription refunds if you go over the billing date for the next month. We suspect the majority of customer complaints concern this issue, so if you plan on canceling, be sure to mail all the DVDs back early.
Prices: Screenclick has a 14-day free trial before you commit to subscribing. They have one limited tariff, one disc out at a time, for a total of two rentals in the month for €7.99 (an average of €4/disc). Much more popular are their four unlimited rental tariffs: a single DVD out-at-a-time rental package is €14.99 per month, two-discs out for €19.99, three disc package is €27.99, and five discs for €34.99.
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 €3.57 per disc on the one-disc package, €2.38 per disc for the two-disc plan, €2.21 per disc for the three-disc plan, and an amazing €2.08 per disc for the four-disc plan--try getting that at your local Xtra-Vision!
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Rental Basics