Hawk’s Babble-Log

Well, I’ve been a member of [GreenCine](http://www.greencine.com/) (pronounced Green-Scene) for a little over a month now, and I can say it’s mostly good.

The good stuff:

+ Prompt Shipments. Once they receive a disc, they send out the next available disc in my queue, usually within a few hours. I’ve been watching their turnaround time, and it’s good and stable.
+ Higher limit on my queue. With NetFlix, I was only allowed 500 discs in my queue. With GreenCine, I can put 9,999 in my queue. Already I’ve got over 600 (yee haaa!) Oh baby, it makes my browser sweat every time I refresh my queue.

+ They work Saturdays! NetFlix might consider working Saturdays if they could charge you twice as much and throttle you down to the point where you got one disc every other week.

+ Good protection of discs. All discs are wrapped in a double cardboard “protector”. This helps the disc arrive with fewer scratches and helps the disc to stay in one piece. With NetFlix, I received two physically broken discs. I don’t _think_ NetFlix would intentionally send them out to me like this (but who knows?), so it was probably our friendly, gentle Post Office service. The discs from GreenCine would have to be dropped between a rock and a very hard place before they’d break. Like, maybe a hammer and a reinforced concrete floor.

+ A truely rockin’ Anime selection. Here’s a short (and incomplete) list of Anime that I’ve got in the queue: Madlax, Ninja Scroll The Series, Noir, Gasaraki, Rurouni Kenshin, Samurai X, Sol Bianca, Twelve Kingdoms, Full Metal Panic, Kino’s Journey, Shadowraiders, Escaflowne, Lodoss War, R.O.D. (Read Or Die), Zero Woman, JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, Samurai Jack, City Hunter, Heat Guy J, and Zone of the Enders. It’s no wonder my queue is over 630 discs already!

+ Quick Add-to-Queue function. With NetFlix, if I add a disc to my queue, I get another webpage with the acknowledgement and other suggestions. Then I would have to hit the [BACK] button to get back to the list so that I could add another disc (I’m the kind of guy who likes to add discs to my queue). With GreenCine, when I click the Add-to-Queue button, a little pop-up-type window opens with the acknowledgement, but the page I was on does not go anywhere. Then, if I add another disc, again the little pop-up window is updated, and the page I’m on doesn’t go anywhere. This means I can run down a list of discs and add them to my queue very quickly and efficiently. Also, within the little pop-up-style window is a link to view my queue. Clicking this link does two things: it closes the little pop-up window, AND loads up my queue in the main window. I like it a lot. What can I say, I like adding stuff to my queue. Makes me feel special ‘n stuff. Forget I said that last part.

+ Personal Lists. With NetFlix, the next available disc would be shipped from the queue. With GreenCine, I can create a “personal list” for a group of discs. For example, my roomie has not seen the show 24 (with Keifer), so I added all four seasons to my queue. Then I created a “personal list” for 24, with all discs from all seasons. Now just those discs are locked in order, regardless of any other discs set in between. This personal list has been sitting at the top of my queue for about two or three weeks now, but none of them have been sent to me as yet because the first one is not yet available. The system skips over that group because the next disc in the group is not available. This feature alone makes it a dream to manage lists and series of discs. And lemme tell ya, I’ve got a lot of series going on now.

Bad stuff:

+ Unavailable discs. As mentioned above with the show 24, some discs have a low “availablity” rating. This doesn’t mean that I won’t get sent this disc next, it just means that I _probably_ won’t get this disc next. It’s very frustrating because I’ve had discs (such as March of the Penguins) at the top of my queue since I set up my account which have not yet shipped. Aarrrrgghhhh!

+ Shipping time is a bit slower than NetFlix, because NetFlix had a distribution facility a hop, skip, and a jump away from me. So, if I sent back a disc, they got it the next day. Then they would send me one and I’d get it the next day. This is one of the reasons I knew they were throttling me. GreenCine is a bit slower as they’re up in Sacramento. It’s not exactly spitting distance from Hollywood where I live. There is an extra day going and an extra day coming. To counter this, I increased my subscription from 5-out-at-a-time to 8-out-at-a-time for $49.95.

So, as you can see, it’s not _all_ good, but _pretty darn_ good; and I am happily continuing my subscription.