Is Greencine a Viable Alternative to Netflix?

Robert wonders if GreenCine is a viable alternative to Netflix or Blockbuster:

I hadn't been to the GreenCine site in a year or so, but since I'm in between vendors I figured I'd check them out. I thought I'd landed in the wrong place, because virtually every link on the front page was a "Buy" link. It looks like a very interesting site for purchasing niche videos -- there's almost nothing about renting until you scroll down to the bottom of the page for the "GC Top Ten Rentals". Even then, clicking that headline text takes you to "Here's a few of the great reasons to buy DVDs from GreenCine".

It can't be a good sign when the online rental business is consistently third on every list on the site (below Video-On-Demand and "Buy Now"). Should I take a chance when I re-enter the DVD-by-mail market, or do I need to stick with the big boys?

I live in Connecticut, so the single shipping center in California is a problem for me, but many people rave about the company. How would you rate GreenCine?

Comments

[Dave]

I'm in Minnesota and have seen extremely slow turnaround with GreenCine. For example, I put my last movie in the mail on Thursday or Friday, November 2 or 3; GreenCine showed my next movie as having shipped Monday, Nov. 6; But I didn't receive it until today, Monday, Nov. 13!

I imagine CT would take even longer.

Also, many mainstream titles (notably, in my experience, TV series) seem to have slow availability.

I hear they have a great selection of anime titles (I'm not enough of an aficionado to have an opinion on that), and they also carry adult DVDs. For some people those factors may outweigh the slow shipping and spotty availability.

By the way, I'm not necessarily blaming GreenCine for the slowness of the shipping, and they seem to have very good service. But they just don't have a national infrastructure remotely rivaling that of NetFlix or Blockbuster.

[idylld]

I originally signed up with Greencine and still have an account there (along with my larger Netflix account). There are a lot of obscure, short, foreign, silent or just plain weird films they have that Netflix doesn't have. I like they way they love film there. They have a great blog and the community discusses films with zest. Makes you realize that there is really *NO* community forum on Netflix. The downfall, as mentioned, is the shipping. The shipping can take a long, long time, even from Southern Cal to SF. You also can wait months for a tough-to-get title, so better have a long queue. Still, I like the philosophy of the site and it's a nice adjunct to Netflix.

[peter]

They're an emperor without clothes...

A lot of hype follows them, but they failed to live up to it in my case. Here's my experience.

They DO NOT have more obscure/artsy/foreign titles than NF. I wanted to move those types of titles from my NF Q to GC, only to find that only 60% were available from a list of almost 100 titles. I got engaged in a discussion on their forum w/ their staff. I even sent them a copy of my NF Q & they said they would see about increasing their selection. Whether they did or not was not determined since I left after a couple of months.

They claim that they stock ONLY the latest & best version of a DVD. This isn't true...I received a 1930s movie (title??.. Edward G Robinson goes bonkers over a hooker) which was cut by Alpha Video & was absolutely unwatchable. NF stocked a newer & far superior version.

GC says repeatedly that they don't throttle their customers. They phrase this something to the effect "we love movies too much to throttle our customers" . On a Monday, I sent back (from the PO) 3 DVD's which they got the next day (I'm in the SF Bay area)....they mailed my next selection to me on that day...the following day they mailed #2, the day after that #3 was mailed. They had listed all 3 titles as having no waiting.

I took my money & ran.

PS. They do have a forum which is staffed by them. There are also some informative articles about movies available for reading. As noted, they talk a good game, which is all they do. Also, they carry some xxx films.

[isnoop]

GreenCine was my first DVD by mail service. Their selection was great. They had all of the most obscure movies that I could never find in any conventional movie store. However, the California-only shipping center's long turn around times were just too much.

I switched to BlockBuster for the in-store rentals and haven't looked back. Living in Seattle, I have Scarecrow video (http://scarecrow.com) if I want that obscure stuff, so it's no big loss.

[Dave]

Just last night, I decided to cancel GreenCine. I like the company, but the shipping and availability issues reduce the value for me, and I have other options.

BTW, this is Dave from MN who posted the first reply.

[bruceff]

GreenCine was my first on-line rental house. At the time (many years ago) they had a clearly superior selection to Netflix. I figured if I want popular new releases I can go to my local store, but I didn't have access to art-house films. I got used to the mail-in concept and added NF for standard fare (and Televideo). As time passed, NF really caught up in terms of depth of selection and always had much faster shipping.

I began to notice that the 20 or so items left in my GreenCine queue that NF didn't stock had been at the top and "long waited" for months(it was like the top of my BBO queue-but with out the 5 month old "coming soons"). I wasn't going to pay to wait for movies to ship, so once all the available movies had cleared my queue I sadly canceled my account.

[type-cast]

Everybody throttles and none of these niche services can compete for selection, speed or availability. Greencine may carry porn, but you probably have long waits to get it. I've had DVDs from Netflix travel 2,000 miles in just 2 days, but they pre-sort mail and have preferential treatment by the post office. I doubt Greencine would get to me in less than 3-4 days. Their community features are good, though, and neither Netflix nor Blockbuster have ANYTHING that can touch them.