…so hopefully I can provide a more objective opinion of GC, and at the very least, a more recent one.

>”…Finally, #6 refers mostly to NetFlix. If you are a
>frequent user of their service, they will intentionally delay
>shipments to you. GreenCine has come right out and said that
>they do not do this, and all the anecdotal evidence I’ve seen
>backs them up on that.”

That’s probably true, but I wouldn’t really know since I keep DVDs for weeks at a time.

>Submitted by jgoerzen on Fri, 07/30/2004 – 7:38am.

>I signed up for GreenCine’s cheapest plan, the 2-out $15/mo
>plan.

This is the plan I have. I used to have a 4-out plan, but reduced when I decided to add on a 3-out plan with Netflix. (I’ll get into why later.)

>In all these services, you maintain a queue. The queue is the
>list of movies you want to see. It can grow quite large –
>hundreds of titles in queue is not at all uncommon.

One thing I like better about GreenCine is the number of titles you can have in your queue. Netflix only allows 500. GreenCine allows 999. I had 800 in there before I started moving stuff over to Netflix.

>The GreenCine staff clearly enjoy what they are doing. They
>write articles and interviews on various subjects.

Yup, and they send out a newletter every week with new releases, recommendations and such.

>There are also GreenCine public forums, and the community
>seems to be an engaged, interesting, and civil one. In
>discussions about GreenCine itself, staff members are often
>seen providing helpful information, asking questions, or even
>simply resolving a problem on the spot. However, they are not
>heavy-handed moderators; criticism about GreenCine is not
>banned, and people feel free to express their true feelings on
>the forums.

That’s for sure…pretty much the only forum I visit is the Feedback forum and people are brutally honest in there, lol.

>
>Overall, I’d say that interactivity is GreenCine’s most
>powerful and unique asset.

I love that when I ask a question, I get a reply from a real live person, not a canned response.

\
>It’s pretty easy to find movies on GreenCine. Just type the
>movie, actress, director, whatever name into the search bar,
>hit Enter. The search takes about 5 seconds but what I’m
>looking for has always been at the top of the list.

Not always true for me. There have been times where I couldn’t pull up a film by title, but then I found it by searching the director’s name.

>GreenCine also has a recommendations feature. This feature
>examines how you have rated movies and what you have put in
>your queue and compares the data with what other customers
>have done.

Actually, I like Netflix’s recommendations feature better. It seems more intuitive.

>Selection
>
>Selection (how many different movies are available) is an
>important criteria for many when choosing an online rental
>site. In terms of actual numbers, GreenCine appears to be
>about #2 behind only Netflix. However, those numbers are
>rather misleading. GreenCine has many, many different movies
>that are simply not carried on Netflix or anywhere else. They
>make a conscious effort to find independent and foreign films
>that are hard to find in the US and make them available for
>rent.

This is true. Unfortunately, a lot of those films that GreenCine has but Netflix doesn’t are in high demand and you may have to wait weeks or even months to rent them. I had the Infernal Affairs Trilogy at the top of my queue for several months before I got them all. And now I’ve had Memories of Murder at the top for at least 4 months.

>
>That’s not to say that they don’t carry mainstream realeases.
>They carry all the standard Hollywood fare, too.

Yep, it’s extremely rare that Netflix carries something that GC doesn’t. I can’t even think of anything off the top of my head.

Items in
>#3 can be added to your request list. This list has a dual
>purpose: first, it helps GreenCine track interest in things
>that they don’t already have (so they can make intelligent
>purchasing decisions). Secondly, when one of those movies does
>show up at GreenCine, it’ll automatically be added to the end
>of your queue and you’ll be e-mailed that this has happened.
>In the week or so that I’ve been a GreenCine member, that’s
>already happened for me.

Yep, this is a nice feature.

>There are only a few #5 items at GreenCine. These tend to be
>very obscure films that are simply not sold on DVD anymore (or
>maybe once were, or maybe will be again). There’s no request
>or queue option here because GreenCine doesn’t know if they’ll
>ever be able to get them in again.

And sometimes they’ll send an e-mail telling you something has been removed from your queue because it’s no longer available.

>GreenCine doesn’t censor their selections. They’ll have things
>that NetFlix won’t carry because of political message or
>content.

The reviewer doesn’t come out and say this (for whatever reason), but GREENCINE HAS PORN. For those of you who like to watch your porn the old-fashioned way… ;-)

>GreenCine provides several useful tools to augment that. The
>most useful is the “personal series”. A series lets you define
>things that you only want to receive in a pariticular order.
>This is great for things like multi-season TV shows on DVD,
>miniseries

I LOVE this feature! I have no idea why Netflix hasn’t incorporated it yet. How hard could it be?

>As a more blunt instrument, you can also “lock” your queue.
>That means that GreenCine will ship things only in absolute
>order of priority. I can’t really imagine why this would be
>useful, given the personal series features, but there it is
>anyway.

It’s useful when you’ve been waiting for something you really want and are willing to have an open space reserved in your queue. That way it won’t pass you up if you already have your allowed number of DVDs out.

>Now then, let’s look at these six items. The first two are
>obviously closely related; if a company has many distribution
>centers, things won’t take as long to reach you since they
>tend to start out closer. Netflix is well-known for having
>many distribution centers, so if this is the most important
>criteria for you, they may be a better choice than GreenCine.
>GreenCine is aware of the problem, but they are not as flush
>with cash as NetFlix is and can’t afford to open new
>distribution centers just yet.

Yep, they keep talking about opening one in the midwest or east coast, but at this point I still don’t think that’s confirmed. In reading the feedback forum, I’ve noted that a lot of subscribers outside of the Bay Area, particularly away from the West Coast have subscriptions with other services, usually Netflix, in order to keep a steady flow of DVDs. I live in Seattle and even I decided I needed Netflix!

>
>#3 is also important. GreenCine is known to be very good in
>this regard. Apparently is is almost unheard-of for them to
>not send out your next DVD the same day that they receive one
>back.

This has ALWAYS been my experience.

> In contrast, there are a lot of complains about
>Netflix in this regard, and they seem to have, well, uneven
>performance, and some of their distribution centers seem to be
>much better than others.

True, but I live close to one of the good ones, apparently, because they always receive and send my dvds by the next day at the latest.

>If a company is short on stocks of a popular DVD, #5 will come
>into play. In the past, this was a complaint with GreenCine,
>but it seems to have dramatically improved recently, and I
>certainly don’t have anything to complain about.

“In the past”…that is some major bullshit, lol. Availability is my BIGGEST complaint about GreenCine and this dude glossed over it like it’s no big deal. THIS is why I have to supplement with Netflix. It’s not the one-week turnaround time, it’s that I can rarely get what’s #1 in my queue even remotely close to the time when I put it at #1. I’ve already mentioned the IA Trilogy and Memories of Murder. What made me get Netflix was, I was waiting months for stuff like Amores Perros and The Big Lebowski!

True, GreenCine’s selection beats Netflix, but the number of copies of each title in their inventory is woefully lacking. :-(

Dude bothered to break down inventory categories, but didn’t describe the availability categories. There are colored bars next to each title in your queue to indicate the level of availability.

Green — Available…If it’s the first green bar in your queue, the dvd will be sent to you – unless someone else (who also has an open slot) has it higher in their queue. Or if you both have it at #1, whoever has had it in their queue the longest will receive it.

Blue –Should be available very soon

Yellow — You’ll be waiting a few weeks

Orange — You’ll be waiting a few months…at least

Red — Nevah gonna happen, my friend

>They are
>expected to put most of the revenues from the recent price
>increase into this and other turnaround issues, so it should
>continue to improve.

Yeah…I guess I see some improvement in the availability of the more mainstream titles. But, I don’t think I should have 2 yellow bars and 6 orange ones in my top 20. :-/

>My own experiences from Kansas showed a four mailing-day trip
>from my house to GreenCine, and a 3- to 4-mailing-day trip
>from GreenCine to my house.

This has been my experience as well, and like I said, I live in Seattle.

>Quality of DVDs
>
>Here I am referring to the physical condition of DVDs you
>receive in the mail. I’ve heard a lot of bad things about
>NetFlix repeatedly sending out cracked, broken, or seriously
>scratched DVDs.

This has never been my experience with Netflix, but then again, it seems that I’m near one of their really good distribution centers.

>GreenCine is obviously run by people that love movies. They
>aren’t working with GreenCine just to make money (like Netflix
>happens to be). They are working with GreenCine because they
>love what they’re doing and having fun on the job. (Example: I
>saw a DVD in the “released to shipping monkeys” state on their
>shipping status screen today.)

The voyeur in me loves their motto: “For people who love to watch.” lol

>GreenCine has found that certain DVDs are prone to break even
>though they have cardboard packaging. They ship those with an
>additional foam insert for yet more protection. They have
>found out which DVDs are problematic and worked out a system
>to apply the more expensive protection to only those. That’s
>as opposed to NetFlix, which sends out known bad DVDs to
>people.

Yup, they definitely have Netflix beat in the packaging department.

My conclusion:

GreenCine Pros:

- Selection includes titles that Netflix doesn’t carry.
Examples:
Infernal Affairs 2 & 3
Memories of Murder
Force of Evil
Carlito’s Way
Sunrise
Xiu Xiu: The Sent Down Girl
Toy Story 1 & 2

- Great, personal customer service

- Queue features like Personal Series and Lock and e-mail notifications when requested titles are added

- Member forums, reviews and lists (if you need that sort of thing — ptp keeps me busy enough!)

- Turnaround time: They work on Saturdays and they always ship the same day as they receive.

- You’re supporting a small business

Cons:

- Availability of titles, even when they’re at the top of your queue.

- Mailing times: For those of you complaining about it taking more than 4 days from when you send a dvd back to Netflix to when you receive your next one, I doubt you’ll be happy with GreenCine’s mailing times…unless you live in Cali.

So, you’ve been warned. There’s a lot to love about GreenCine, but it definitely has its problems. But the same could be said for Netflix. It’s a tradeoff. Or you could be like me and do both! :-p