Davis-area video stores

[ron_newman]

I'm probably the last one on my block to buy a DVD player. But now that I have it, I'm interested in hearing people's opinions of local video rental stores.

It looks like we have three choices: Hollywood Express on Elm Street, West Coast Video across the street, and Blockbuster in Porter Square.
My first impressions:

Hollywood Express -- largest selection, best chance of finding something obscure

Blockbuster - very liberal rental terms: a '2 day' rental is really 9 days, a 7-day is really 14 days. A lot more foreign and independent films than I would have expected, though probably not in the same league as Hollywood Express

West Coast Video -- why is this store still in business? I don't see any obvious reason to go here.

Comments

[clevernonsense.livejournal.com]

even with all of them all around, I still prefer netflix.

you get the movie the next day and it's much easier to just have a queue set up. I'm lazy :p

[twe.livejournal.com]

I agree. Netflix is beats them all hands down for me. It's cheap, it's save me time & gas, and in a big city like this, I put a watched DVD in the mail on one morning, and I have a new one in my box 2 days later.

[ron_newman]

Yeah, but right now at least, Netflix doesn't fit my model of how I rent: wander around a store, say "hey! that's something I wanted to see but missed in the theatre", and take it to the counter.

Plus, I tend to like to spend my money locally if possible.

(It probably makes a difference that I'm a short walk to all three of these stores, so "save time and gas" isn't an issue for me.)

[kjc.livejournal.com]

Yep, same for me. I can (and do) walk to either store in 15 minutes.

Hollywood Express is an independent store. A small local chain that started with the Porter Square store. It's not an offshoot or substore of anything else.

And I prefer wandering around, looking for movies as well. Plus I need a deadline for returning flix or I never do.

[twe.livejournal.com]

Fair enough. I find the wandering around the store doesn't suit me so much, whereas being able to throw things on my Netflix queue as I think of them works quite well. Plus I'm lucky enough to be able to mail things from work with no more effort that it takes to reach up and put it in the mail slot, so the convenience factor is amazing.

I don't know if you have (digital) cable, but Comcast actually has a moderate selection of free somewhat older movies in their On Demand thingy (as well as some that cost ~$4), for those times when the video store is closed or the weather is bad.

[yangelina.livejournal.com]

I love Netflix, except out of every three discs I get, at least one that doesn't play all the way through. I probably just have very poor luck with getting bad discs, but it's still irritating - we watch a movie to about 2/3 way through, then it stops and we wait another couple of days for a replacement to get to us, PLUS that takes time away from how frequently we get a new movie. It's bad enough that we're considering cancelling our service. :(
I'm glad to see that not everybody has this experience!

[ron_newman]

is it possible that your DVD player is the real problem? One out of three sounds quite excessive.

[yangelina.livejournal.com]

We have DVD players in the house plus a xbox and we would try on all of them, in the beginning. A couple of times we even did what they suggested, cleaning with soap/water. Now we just give up and send them back.

[yangelina.livejournal.com]

(oops) we have three DVD players in various computers.

[clevernonsense.livejournal.com]

one thing to try: note the time it freezes, then go to scene selection and select the next scene, then rewind until a few seconds after the freezepoint. That's worked for us.

I've only had a couple netflix movies freeze that way, both times we got around it.

[yangelina.livejournal.com]

On the main computer that we use, the discs completely kill the machine and we have to force reboot (we have tried the skipping over bad parts trick, too). We do suspect that it is that particular DVD player that is causing most of the problem (playing those bad discs on our other computers only locks up the software instead of crashing completely), except it doesn't explain why none of the DVDs we get from Hollywood Express ever had any problems playing in that same computer.
It's a bummer, but man, is Netflix convenient.

[ron_newman]

do you also have a just-plain DVD player (as opposed to a computer that plays DVDs) ?

[yangelina.livejournal.com]

xbox is the closest thing we have to that, with all these gadgets we felt it unecessary to have a stand alone DVD player.
I'm still not entirely convinced that it's the DVD players we have, since the stuff we rent from Hollywood Express always play just fine.
Ah well.

[clevernonsense.livejournal.com]

we've been getting the 24 shows on DVD and recently, they put disc 2 instead of disc 3 in the mail. IT WAS HORRIFYING