The latest entertainment fix is now a mere click away for film fans. There are now at least three online services in Singapore which offer fans a wide range of DVD choices.
In the past four years, Hollywoodclicks.com, Videohub.sg and Homepal.com.sg have sprung up, offering DVDs-by-mail services here.
These services work on a subscription basis where customers pay a monthly fee and get all-you-can-view access to movies and TV shows. There are no late fees, which is an advantage over bricks-and-mortar shops which charge up to $1 a day for late fees.
The convenience of such services is obviously popular with customers.
Ms Sharon Kaur, 28, who is currently unemployed, says she likes that there is no looming return date to worry about.
'Often, plans to go out with friends come up and I have to put off watching films to another day,' says the Hollywoodclicks.com customer of three years.
Her subscription plan of $41.73 a month works out to about $3 per disc as she watches about three discs a week. This is about the same as the rate charged by a walk-in shop, but with the bonus of online browsing and home delivery.
Mr Gerard Glass, 42, an accountant, has been with the Homepal service since 2004. He enjoys the convenience of not having to travel to a shop or pay late fees.
He is on a $36.95 plan which lets him hold three discs at any time. Because he is not a heavy user, he pays more than he
would at a walk-in shop, but he feels the convenience of home delivery makes up for it. He lives in an HDB flat in Sengkang and there are no video shops near his home. 'I like TV shows like CSI and 24, but sometimes I miss episodes when they air,' he says.
Mr Donald Lim, a co-owner of Videohub, one of the newest online DVD rental sites which opened in May, says: 'The convenience of getting and returning DVDs by mail will matter a lot in a fast-paced society.'
He believes that as sentiment about the economy goes south, more families will turn to movie rentals as a cheaper form of entertainment, which means growth potential for his business.
Mr Lim, who started with a shop in Ang Mo Kio in 1994, says that although he saves on the running costs of a brick-and-mortar operation, he had to invest heavily in IT systems to run the e-commerce system.
These online rental services are similar to American pioneer Netflix, which began operating in 1997. Netflix recently boasted a third-quarter revenue of US$340 million (S$512 million), with close to nine million subscribers in the United States.
All shops here have adopted the Netflix subscription model. A customer opts for one of several monthly subscription plans, which range from about $20 to over $50 a month. The fees vary based on the number of discs he wants to hold at a given time.
Ms Diana Koh, marketing manager for Hollywoodclicks.com, says her company's $41.73 three-disc plan is the most popular. This means customers can keep a maximum of three discs at home. To get new movies, he must mail the discs back.
Hollywoodclicks, having been in operation since March 2004, is a veteran in the business. It has about 20,000 subscribers and stocks around 10,000 titles in various languages.
Subscribers to all three services get a user account which allows them to log in to a web page where they create a movie queue. DVDs are mailed out based on queue order and payments can be made by credit card or PayPal.
DVDs come with a stamped return envelope and when a customer has finished viewing the films, he simply pops the DVDs in the post. He will receive new deliveries only after previous rentals are received. There is usually a two- to three-day wait before he receives a fresh batch of DVDs.
The Singapore stores do not set a ceiling on the total number of discs a customer receives in a month as long as he opts for an all-you-can-view plan. The stores say they will mail discs out promptly, usually on the same day or the next working day after they receive an item back from the customer.
In the US, a practice the industry calls 'throttling' came to light a few years ago where a company deliberately delays the mailing of discs to users whom it deems are returning them too quickly.
Customers in the US took a class-action lawsuit against Netflix, which admitted it had quietly throttled heavy users. The company paid out millions in the 2006 settlement.
Mr Eric Phan, co-owner of Homepal.com here, promises: 'Our unlimited rental plans do not cap the total number of discs. Our subscribers decide the rental pace.'
However, there are lower-cost plans for casual users that do set limits. Hollywoodclicks.com, for example, has a $22.47 monthly plan that allows a maximum of four discs per month. Homepal also has a pay-per-item plan.
Videohub.sg, the new entrant, has a smaller selection but aims to carve its own niche by offering Blu-ray high-definition discs in addition to DVDs and VCDs. Like its competitors, it also has around 10,000 titles.
About 300 subscribers have joined since the site was launched in June this year.
Homepal's Mr Phan says his company allows an account holder to create several queues, so that one subscription can be shared by several people in the family. He declined to say how many subscribers he has. He stocks about 10,000 titles.
Newly released blockbusters are always in hot demand and a customer like Mr Glass says he can wait for up to a month for the disc to become available. If a title is loaned out, Homepal, like the other sites, will send the next available disc in the customer's online queue.
This is one of the disadvantages of the online service. The demand for popular films means that stocks can run low. Users often need to live with the fact that they have to watch shows low in their queues or else end up constantly frustrated.
Users familiar with Netflix complain that local equivalents fail to match up to the American service which offers easy browsing as well as a proper user-rating system. There are also complaints that some of the local websites are riddled with poor grammar.
Nonetheless, users say they enjoy being able to browse online as it is much easier to search, read reviews and synopses, especially for smaller, quality titles that are not heavily marketed.
Ms Kaur says: 'I like to slow down and discover good films. I took one, Human Trafficking, made by Hallmark, about how girls are bought and sold in Europe. It turned out to be awesome.'
This article was first published in The Straits Times on October 29, 2008.
