February 5, 2006

Money Saving Chronicles #4: Do Online Movie and Music Programs Make Sense?

Posted by Adam Graham in : Money Saving Chronicles

For this week’s Money Saving Chronicles, I decided to examine two different popular services that are huge online to find out if they actually save you money.

Lets go ahead and get started with Netflix the internet’s biggest provider of movie rentals by mail.

Net Flix offers you one of four plans, three with unlimited rentals: Their $9.99 Special with which you can get 1 movie at a time, their $14.99 package with two at a time or the $17.99 for three at a time.

The way the program works is simple. You rent a DVD, it comes in the mail. You watch it and then you send it back, then Net Flix sends you another movie. NetFlix gives an average delivery time of 1 day, but that’s not realistic. According to one blogger’s experience, 2 days from Net Flix to their house is common and 3 days is more typical for getting them back, so for each movie you’re looking at five days. So, if you were watching movies and then immediately shipping them back, with the Net Flix package, you’d be looking at around 5 movies in a month for $9.99. If you were renting all new releases, that’d be a good deal. Most people don’t do that. They’ll have the movie hanging around for a couple days before they send it back, thus eliminating any benefit from the $9.99 package. However, with one of the higher packages, if you’re a big time movie watcher, you can have a movie every night on the $17.99 program, and just keep them moving in and out of your house.

Now, I’ve read about some people renting older movies off of Net Flix. In general that’s a bad idea and here’s why. You can find cheap rentals in your own home town.

Every city has a rental store that has a special movie night where you can get any non-new release for a special deal. I’ve seen some places as low as 49 cents. You can grab any release that’s more than 6 months-a year old and watch it, or you can watch certain of their older films for the low price. In addition, to that many libraries have small film libraries that you can check out at no charge. Yes, it may mean not seeing the new release for a while, but the savings over time can be a bigtime payoff.

Now, if you’re really watching 25-30 movies a month, then Net Flix starts to make sense, but watching 30 movies a month doesn’t from a lot of different viewpoints. I’ll also add that there are comparable offers to NetFlix out there, I’m just not going to cover them all. If you decide this type of service is for you, shop around and find the best deal.

Moving onto music, services which allow you to download unlimited amounts of music are quite popular. These can be a good investment, depending on what you want. For me, it makes sense to have Yahoo Music Unlimited becuase I just listen to my music while writing and don’t take the songs anywhere. If you’re wanting to take your music with you, it may be a different story. Yahoo Music Unlimited offers their “To Go Service” is available for $119.88 per year, but that’s a tad pricy.

If you’re going to use a Mobile device, what I’d reccomend doing instead is going on Half.com(affiliate link) or a site like it to purchase CDs. You can find some good playable buys (generally anywhere from $3-7 depending on what you’re looking for) and then transfer those onto your computer and then to your mobile device. The only way buying a service like the “To Go” makes any sense is if you’re wanting songs off hundreds of different CDs. If you’ve only got a few you want, then a Mobile Device and a few CDs off Half.com makes sense.

,

10 Comments

  1. Comment by Becky [Visitor]

    Before Netflix, I used to rent maybe one or two videos per month, because I hated due dates, late fees, and the inconvenience of going to the store, spending an hour browsing, and having to return the video later. Netflix has greatly increased my movie-watching. It is a great bargain whether you watch old or new movies. Blockbuster Video doesn’t keep many classics in stock. If your idea of an “old movie” is 1994, they still have only a few thousand of those, but Netflix has 55,000 titles from 1897 to the present, from every continent, in many languages. Because of Netflix, I can watch 11 movies per month for just $18.00 on the 3-out plan, and turnaround is 1-2 days.

  2. Comment by Andrea Graham [Member]

    wow that sounds like an infomercial for real. I think by old, Adam meant movies that aren’t new releases, as he mentioned in the article. I don’t believe he was talking about classic movies as you are, but to be fair, it sounds like he also didn’t take them and the selection available into consideration.

  3. Comment by Adam Graham [Member]

    I wasn’t thinking of Blockbuster as a good place to go for movies. I’ve never gotten really good deals through them, I was thinking of a local store, independently run and yes, you can find some good deals at a local non-Chain store. You’ll find a lot of local video stores with some pretty good selections.

  4. Comment by "Radical" Russ [Visitor]

    Weird. My wife wanted to get NetFlix, and once we checked it out, I made the same analysis as you, in that you’d get about five movies — at best — in a given month, so your cost is about $2 a movie. In a trade-off for no late fees, you’ve got to be diligent about receiving, watching, and sending back your movies as soon as possible, and forcing yourself to watch five movies a month just to make it worthwhile.

    Then there’s the $18 deal, where you get three movies. That’s better for keeping a steady flow of movies, yet again you’re on the receive/watch/send treadmill and you’ve got to make movie watching an appointment.

    For $18 a month, get HBO/Cinemax, and make the occasional pay-per-view purchase.

  5. Comment by Kim [Visitor]

    We just reupped Netflix as an alternate to cable tv. Most shows release the season of DVDs within a few months of season end, and renting 4 to 6 discs to catch an entire season can cost up to $25, and we can watch them all within a week and a half. Netflix is an awesome deal at $18 a month versus $40 a month for cable. I’m thinking about buying an antenna, though, just in case we want to watch some broadcast for sports.

  6. Comment by Adam Graham [Member]

    I’d say if you’re getting rid of Cable for NetFlix, that’s a good deal. Most people aren’t as NetFlix is an Add-On. Kim, it looks like you’re one of the people, it makes sense for.

    My wife and I don’t have cable and we watch little Television. We’ve got several DVD sets, we’ve been working our way through for the last few months. We ask for them as Christmas and Birthday presents. I’ve got almost 2 full Seasons of Highway to Heaven unwatched, along with a Season + of Green Acres, a Season and a half of Batman: The Animated Series, a season of Sherlock Holmes-just a lot of DVD box sets we’ve gotten from releatives. A few from each other, but doing it the NetFlix way just doesn’t make sense for us or most people because we’d spend a lot of time one one or two discs. With as much as you watch TV, it makes sense because you’re not only saving the cost of the Set, you’re also saving the cost of Cable.

  7. Comment by Michael [Visitor]

    Kim and Becky are correct. I also have NetFax. We are on the 3 per plan. What you might not understand is that each dvd is in it’s own package and is sent back separately With the 3 out plan we average about 20 -22 movies per month. It typically takes one day to send and receive for us. My wife wanted to catch up on the TV show 24 . She accomplished this by watching the dvds.The cost for us is less than a dollar each. Clearly it is a great value for us.

    But that is not where netflix really shines. Netflix has a deal which allows them to get new releases prior to the day they are releases. This allows them to send the movie to your home for arrival on the actual release date. Movie which go to pay per view come out later. Any of the HBO, Cinimax, or other pay channels wait months to get those movies. We have found that most f the pay movie channels are useless as we have already seen anything we wanted months earlier. I would never be able to watch all the content at the rate these disks come in. But we have 2 children who also want to see various films. If I were single I would opt for a very basic dish package with only HBO as I enjoy the Sopranos.

    There is also another actor to consider with netflix. If you enjoy any of the TV shows offered on the networks you are spending time watching commercials. Free TV is a misnomer. You are getting paid for your time. Take a season of 24 as an example. You are saving several hours not watching commercials. What is your time worth?

    You couldn’t watch all the content you would get with netflix unless you are housebound. It gives you more current movies faster and cheaper and it the best way to watch programs you enjoy on network TV.

  8. Comment by sassyfras [Visitor]

    Netflix has bought my unwavering loyalty with their outstanding customer service. I am in an area affected by Hurricane Katrina. Shortly after K hit, Netflix sent me an email letting me know that my account was being suspended. They also refunded my monthly fee for both August & September, and my first two months after I reactivated my membership were free. They were very nice about wanting to know if the discs I’d had when the storm hit were lost. I still had the discs, but they weren’t harassing me about them-they just wanted to know if they should write them off or not. They have provided way better service than any other company I or any of my friends have had to deal with in the aftermath of the storm.

    I was pretty pleased with them before the storm, too. They have a fantastic selection. I have rented lots of animes and documentaries that my local video store doesn’t carry. I have also used them to catch up on shows, both cable and network. We don’t have cable, and I LOVE not having to sit through commercials for the network shows. Before the storm, turnaround was as fast as one day each way. It’s slowed down now, but that’s not their fault-the main post office in town is still not operational. In short, I ADORE Netflix.

  9. Comment by Adam Graham [Member]

    NetFlix works great if you’re renting a lot of movies, I tend to think if you’re watching 24 movies a month, constantly like that, its a lot of time which is valuable, but saving money is about living your life as inexpensively as possible.

    What I’m saying is for people who are occassional movie watchers or not watching movies all the time, its not a sensible investment.

  10. Comment by Adam Graham [Member]

    Great story on Net Flix’s customer service. That goes a long way.

RSS feed for comments on this post.

Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.