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How to Avoid Wasting Money When Renting DVD Movies

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Almost every home in the United States has a DVD player, and millions of those homes will rent one or more DVD movies each month. There are many different ways to rent movies today, so it's important you keep up to date with all the movements in the market if you are to avoid over paying for your entertainment. Saving a few bucks has become even more important in recent months, so I want to use this article to explain how you can get the best out of the system.

1. Do you pay a monthly subscription fee?

The online DVD rental companies have millions of customers in the US alone, and this picture is repeated around the world. There are a number of different plans you can take out with these companies starting at around $5 a month, but if you are not using the service to the max, there might be a cheaper alternative for you.

The most expensive plan at Netflix rentals for example is around $17 a month (at the time of writing), and for that, you can get 3 DVD's at a time and exchange those DVD's as often as you want each month. If you have this plan and are exchanging the movies 4 or 5 times a month, you are getting excellent value, but if you only get 1 lot of movies each month, you could get a cheaper deal. Online DVD rental is best suited to those who watch a lot of movies and don't mind waiting for them to be delivered.

2. Do you use your local DVD rental store?

My local store is great, I get personal service, the owner knows me, and I can get an honest opinion of a movie before I decide to rent it. Another great feature of my local store is that if I decide I want to watch a movie after I finish work on Friday, it takes me 2 minutes to drive around the corner to pick up the movie I want.

The downside to all this is my local store charges almost $5 to rent the latest releases. For me it is worth it for the personal interaction, but if you rent 10 or more movies each month, this can get real expensive. Local DVD rental store are best suited to people who rent just a few movies each month.

3. Do you use DVD rental kiosks?

If you don't have these in your neighborhood yet, you soon will have. Companies like RedBox have over 17,000 locations for these unmanned rental stations, and they plan to open thousands more. This company operates its business on the basis of convenience and cheap rentals (you can rent from as little as $1 per night), and this is a great service for the disciplined movie fan who never gets charged late fees.

If you just want to watch a movie and return it same day or next day, this is a really cheap way of doing it. If however you are not organized enough to return the DVD on time every time, you can soon start to rack up some serious late fees that will wipe out any savings you have made.

In conclusion, if you want the cheapest service, kiosks are the way for you (you have to be organized though). For those who just want to select a few movies each month, your local rental store will be the best value, and if it's choice you hanker for, an online company such as Netflicks movie rentals will give you virtually unlimited numbers of movies and TV shows to choose from.