One of the ammenties our building offers is a theater room. It sounded good when we were touring places but for the first 15 weeks of living here we never set foot inside the little building on the other side of the gym. It doesn’t cost anything to rent the space, just fill out a reservation and you can enjoy your own movie theater for six hours at a time.
Last week we watched the first two Bourne movies down there and I must say we really enjoyed ourselves. The room has a small kitchen area in the back with counter space to ummm prepare stuff I guess. There’s a wine fridge (we chose to store ketchup in it), a sink … well you get the idea. On the other side of the wall is 20 over-sized theater chairs and a gigantic movie screen. On the wall is a control panel where you can select television, the DVD player, or the VHS. VHS? Anyway, there is surround sound everywhere and the kick ass control thingy also said it was able to handle THX sound. How cool!
Which brings me to our dilema. We own a decent selection of movies, and we also own a number of television shows on DVD including the first season of Law and Order (Robonet!), all three seasons of Entourage (Ari is great), and the entire UK version of The Office (way better than the US version).
There are plenty of movies we would love to watch but where are we supposed to rent them from?
Back in Chicago we could walk to Blockbuster and rent whatever we wanted. There isn’t a Blockbuster in the immediate area so we are thinking about Netflix or Blockbuster online. Both programs seem relatively the same but there must be some differences between the two. We are not the type of people to rent a ton of movies over the course of a month and if a Blockbuster isn’t close to begin with I am not interested in returning movies in the store.
So what service do you use? Any movies you’ve seen recently you would like to suggest?
P.S. My apologies to our Canadian readers because I am pretty sure Netflix doesn’t exist there. I know Blockbuster does but I’m not sure they do the mailing thing. Do you guys still rent at Jumbo Video? Rogers? I am pretty sure Canada has more mom and pop video stores than any other place in the world.
i’ve been a netflix subscriber for a really long time, and i definitely recommend it.
way back when the ralphs and market lofts were starting their construction, there were plans for a blockbuster to open up there. that’s back when i was thinking of opening a video/dvd store in the old bank district, also before old bank dvd opened.
I’ve used both (I never hardly ever go to stores unless I need it RIGHT NOW, but w/ a little planning on-line is way better).
Blockbuster has a real cheap program- $4.95/mo, 3 movies/month, but only 1 out at a time.
Netflix is better is you want BluRay or are interested in streaming high-def as they are ahead in that technology.
You can’t really go wrong w/ either as no contracts, and just saving one or two late fees at a store can make up for monthly cost.
Eric
Thanks guys for the information so far! In due time I’m sure we will have a Blu-ray player (when prices come down) but it’s not a huge consideration as this time.
I know Old Bank DVD carries mostly classic, documetary, and art house DVDs so it really isn’t something I’m going to consider.
I wasn’t aware of the Blockbuster talk in the area when Market Lofts first came together – thanks for the tip.
We only need a plan that gives us one out at a time I think, at least we will start with that. Until now I never really noticed the lack of a Blockbuster in the area.
We have been with Netflix for a few years now. We don’t have blue ray, still enjoy the movies. We can get new movies, old movies, foreign movies. I have about 70 movies in my queue now. After you send a movie back, you usually will get the new one in 2 days. It is so much cheaper than actually going to a blockbuster, in fact I have not stepped foot in a blockbuster since I got netflix.
We have Netflix as well. The two-at-a-time deal is fine for us since we don’t watch that much, but if you’re going to be viewing 4-5 times a week, I’d suggest going for their 3-at-a-time plan.
Thanks Rich for your Netflix experience. I think the one or two at a time deal is where we’re headed.