Hawk's Babble-Log

Well, it’s official: I’ve cancelled my membership with NetFlix (again) and have started up with GreenCine.

[http://www.greencine.com/](http://www.greencine.com/)

GreenCine is pronounced Green-Scene. They have _nearly_ all of the titles that NetFlix does, and their anime collection rocks. I’m going to be busy for quite some time with their anime section!

I signed up Thursday and began the tedious process of transferring my queue. My first five were sent on Friday and just showed up today, Monday. So far, they’re a little slow on the delivery. NetFlix usually gets ‘em to me in one day. Usually. I mean, when they’re not throttling me, that is.

That’s why I switched. I want to see how a service does it without throttling my usage. GreenCine seems to deliver on their promise of UNLIMITED rentals. It plainly states in their FAQ that they do not practice throttling. I decided to go with the same number of discs checked out that I was using with NetFlix; I’m at the 5-out-at-a-time program for $33.95.

The discs are packaged very well. Each disc has it’s own sleeve, just like NetFlix, then it’s wrapped in two layers of cardboard (which NetFlix does not do), then it’s put in an envelope for mailing, similar in design to NetFlix. With this kind of packaging, I don’t expect I’ll ever receive a physically broken disc (I did once in the years I was with NetFlix) and I expect that the discs I do receive will be playable.

The non-playable-disc problem is what deterred me from Blockbuster Online. Well, it was the major issue, but not the only issue. Search my blog for Blockbuster Online and you’ll see my review of that crappy service.

Imagine this: You decided to rent a movie and you really want to see it. It arrives in the mail and you invite some friends over to see it. All your friends arrive to see this movie, so you break out the drinks ‘n chips ‘n snacks ‘n stuff. Then you pop that disc into your high-quality DVD player and settle down into your couch or your favorite chair or whatever. The movie begins, gets about half-way through, then stops. Your DVD player skips all over the place, but won’t continue the damn disc. Even chapter-skipping forward doesn’t work.

What now? Do you calmly tell your friends that they get to do something else with their time? Imagine the reaction if this happened in a movie theater.

This situation doesn’t happen often with NetFlix. Occasionally I’ll get a bad disc, but it’s not enough to make me slather some peanut butter on that DVD, hold it firmly in both hands, and eat the disc out of spite. That’s how bad it got with BlockBuster Online. Plus, their website sucks ass. There’s that technical term again: sucks ass. Means it was bad. Really bad.

Anyway… now that I’m with GreenCine, I expect I’ll be staying a while. So far, things are good. I’ve already got a few hundred discs in my queue, and these guys don’t limit me to 500 like NetFlix does! I can put almost 10,000 discs in my queue! Ha HA! It’s going to take me _minutes_ to load my queue into my browser!

I also like the sense of community with GreenCine. I can setup my own profile, build lists, write reviews, email other members, etc. With NetFlix, you can write reviews, but that’s about it. With GreenCine, I was able to find a huge number of excellent lists of stuff I’m interested in, such as all the old Zatoichi (blind swordsman) movies, and fantastic lists of good anime. Also, the rating system with GreenCine is from 1 to 10, and with NetFlix, it’s 1 to 5.

I like GreenCine much better so far. As always, I’ll keep you updated!