• Staggering selection of movies to rent
• Few real competitors
• Rent games as well as films
• Now includes downloadable movies
• Brilliant extra content to inpsire movie selection
• Includes huge selection of Blu-Ray titles

STOP PRESS! Lovefilm is now offering a Pay As You Go DVD rental system which is well suited to occassional users. Read our review of Lovefilm Pay As You Go. WITH Lovefilm DVD rental’s claim that they have ‘virtually every DVD in the UK’ and with over 65,000 movie titles (note, that includes bonus discs) on their virtual shelves, there are few other online DVD rental sites that even come close. Perhaps only Blockbuster can claim to compete on that front. We’ve tried hard over the years to catch Lovefilm out, punching in the most obscure world cinema titles we could find and, almost flabbergastingly, Lovefilm has the blinking title in its catalogue! What’s more, if for some reason you manage to find some long forgotten UK-released DVD that miraculously isnt in the Lovefilm collection, they’ll not only source it for you in days, they say they’ll send it to you first! We’ve long wanted to test this claim out, but have yet to find a title that Lovefilm didn’t stock. One of the best online DVD rental providers Despite being a monolith that has raised the heckles of more than a few disgruntled customers, LoveFilm remains at the top end of the UK DVD rental market, especially when it comes to innovation. For example, Lovefilm now allows their zillions of subscribers to create and publicly share their own ‘collections’. It’s a brilliantly simple, but hugely useful feature when you are stuck for inspiration. We especially love the official selections of certain celebrities including Matt Damon and Bill Nighy. In fact as Lovefilm becomes more and more powerful, it seems that their celebrity endorsements become ever more impressive. While this is no criteria on which to judge the service, we can’t help but be slightly impressed. More importantly though, we’re also thrilled to see that Lovefilm has listened to its customers and now offer a Pay As You Go rental service too where, instead of unlimited rentals, you simply pay for each DVD you rent. Read our full review of the Lovefilm Pay As You Go DVD rental service. Not everyone loves Lovefilm While we maintain that LoveFilm has few online DVD rental services that rival it, it is not without fault. Some users report a slow turnaround and others are disgruntled with the way they have been treated by Lovefilm’s customer services. Keep in mind though that with more customers than any other service, there are naturally going to be more complaints. Our experience with LoveFilm has always been positive. In terms of turn-around, our multiple tests of the service over the years has always been extremely impressed with the fast turnaround of titles. What has got us down most has been the availability of top titles, which – like with all other DVD rental services – remains the achilles heel of the whole business model. Fair use ‘throttling’ Heavier users should be aware that LoveFilm operates a fair use policy where the heaviest of renters will lose priority to popular titles during periods of high demand. There does seem to be a rather hazy interpretation of what a heavy user is and even some moderate users claim to have fallen foul of the policy. As we said, the other thing Lovefilm tends to fall down on at times is their availability of top choices in your rental queue. In this instance, Lovefilm are a victim of their own success – with almost a million subscribers, the mind just boggles at how many copies of popular titles they’d need to stock in order to fulfill everyone’s wishlist in order. Having said that, most of Lovefilm’s rival DVD rental firms suffer the same problem. If you want your first choice of movie at exactly the time you want to watch it, you’d be better off with Sky, Virgin Media, Tiscali TV who all offer on-demand movies, or plump for Lovefilm’s slightly pricier downloadable movies (more about that below). Now offering games rentals too LoveFilm now offers game rentals for a range of consoles including the big 5: PS2, XBox 360, PS3, PSP, Wii and just recently DS too, however they don’t offer as many titles as the more dedicated games rental services. This is fast changing though as Lovefilm continues to push its games rentals heavily. We suspect there are some sweaty palms over at the dedicated games rental services, but the fact that there are still a handful of dedicated online games rental sites who are clearly doing very well and growing steadily suggests that despite Lovefilm’s no-doubt comparitively collossal budget for promoting its games rental packages, winning over the tech-savvy and anarchic customer group of core gamers is going to be an uphill battle. Customers can choose from 4 packages that include both films and games, including the new max-4-per-month limited plan which will suit lighter users. There isn’t an option for a ‘games only’ subscription, but you can choose to rent as many games or films as you want, so if you don’t want to watch any films you don’t have to, but it’s nice to have the option there if you do. Movie downloads LoveFilm has recently started offering movie downloads, and significantly, you do not need to be a paying Lovefilm subscriber to access these films. While there are some free titles, it is essentially a PAYG service with the option of renting a download (prices vary, but are on average £2.99), or buying a download where you can burn the film legally and keep it (prices start at around £9.99). In some cases you can buy the download to watch immediately, and Lovefilm will send you a hardcopy of the film on DVD to keep. These Lovefilm movie downloads are becoming increasingly popular on the site, and Lovefilm now boasts over 2000 titles available for download. We strongly suspect this is the beginning of the end for DVDs-by-post, and Lovefilm is – once again – leading the pack.

LoveFilm get two-thumbs up for: Being the closest thing to actually being in the video shop! We also love Lovefilm’s massive title range, fast turnaround and innovative features.

BUDGET CD and DVD (and game) e-tailer CD WOW! has gone for the budget option with their DVD rental system: Like many non-specialists, they have hitched a ride with Lovefilm – the reigning kings of DVD rental in the UK – and created an agricultural copy of the parent site with very few additional DVD rental benefits.

While the site contains everything you’d see on the Lovefilm site, including all the excellent features such as seeing ’similar titles’ to the title you’ve just added to your queue, selecting the priority of the film, and opting to receive box-set items in order.

Unfortunately there is a clumsy feel to the mechanics of the service, and while no doubt using Lovefilm’s excellent ‘browse and select’ technology, the way it is all displayed feels second-rate and bolted-on.

No cheaper than Lovefilm DVD Rental

While Lovefilm DVD rental has eight price categories, CD WOW! has just three, and there’s none of the CD WOW!’s famous price discounting here either.

In fact the prices of the CD WOW! DVD rental packages are identical to those of their Lovefilm parent service, which makes one wonder why you’d choose CD WOW DVD rental over Lovefilm.

30 day free trial

The 30-day free trial may be one reason (Lovefilm’s free trial is only 14 days), and the generous freebies that CD WOW! often give away when you sign up, including free DVD’s or a free MP3 player.

Makes a fantastic gift

To their credit, CD WOW! DVD Rental has just introduced a rather neat little gift subscription tool that allows you to buy a choice of gift subscriptions (1 month, 3 month, 6 month or 12 month) with varying degrees of discount, the more months you buy. It’s simple to use and makes a fantastic gift, so kudos to CD WOW! for that addition.

So is CD WOW! DVD Rental any good? Yes, but with little to offer over Lovefilm’s DVD rental service itself (apart from a more generous CD WOW! free trial and the giveaways), you’d be better off going straight to Lovefilm, especially if you may want to rent games as well.

WE certainly didn’t see this coming! CinemaParadiso used to be a wilting flower offering a small range of mostly world-cinema titles.

50,000 movies to rent

Now, armed with a swanky new design – and incorporating the catalogue of the now defunct Zoovies DVD Rental to take their tally of films to rent up to around 50,000 – CinemaParadiso DVD rental is creeping up on the DVD rental juggernauts like Lovefilm and Blockbuster, but with lower prices and arguably better customer service.

You’ll still find all the great world cinema titles that CinemaParadiso DVD rental was famous for, but in addition you now have a huge choice of popular titles too.

In fact, in the coming months Cinema Paradiso DVD rental expect to have every DVD released in the UK. They perhaps haven’t yet quite caught up with Lovefilm on that front, but they come close.

One of the cheapest DVD rental services

CinemaParadiso DVD Rental’s pocket friendly prices (they market themselves as the “UK’s cheapest online rental specialist”) make them one of the best-value DVD rental services, especially when you consider the broad array of both limited and unlimited DVD rental packages.

There are a massive 6 different DVD rental packages available: 3 unlimited, and 3 limited.

We are increasingly becoming fans of the limited package model (where you pay less per month, but can only watch a certain number of films) as it becomes obvious that unlimited rentals are – in our busy lives – quite difficult to make the most of. CinemaParadiso’s unique selling point here (which is better than the limited package offers from some other online DVD rental services) is that if you don’t watch your allowed quota each month, the remainder are carried over to the next month.

This is fantastic if you are having a busy month or are away on holiday.

Got six friends?

CinemaParadiso DVD rental has just launched a fantastic loyalty scheme too where, if you recommend the service to 6 of your friends and they all go on to sign up, you will get free membership for as long as 6 of your friends remain CinemaParadiso DVD rental customers.

If you can’t persuade six friends – or if you dont have six friends period! – you’ll still receive a 1/6th discount for each friend you do manage to sign up. Read more about Cinema Paradiso’s ‘Friends for Films’ scheme.

Another new addition to the CinemaParadiso DVD rental site is their ’shop’ section where you can buy ex-rental DVD’s for a fraction of the RRP price. All the DVD’s for sale are 100% guaranteed quality, include DVD artwork and DVD case as well as free first class delivery from CinemaParadiso DVD rental to you. What’s more, most of the titles were selling for under £3!

Small army of fans

Being a smaller company, CinemaParadiso DVD rental has built up a small army of fans who are hooked on the DVD rental company’s excellent customer service.

Title turnaround is fast – and in many cases faster than its rivals. Long may it continue!