I am a first time user of an on-line movie rental service and hence, do not really have any other commensurate services to benchmark seventymm on, unlike some of the earlier reviews on the same subject.
I found this concept very welcome because of multiple reasons that I’ve listed below.
# Their collection of movies ranging across languages is exhaustive. This to me is simply awesome because between me and my wife, we watch movies in Tamil, Malayalam & Bengali in addition to English and Hindi. Now, to be able to find a reasonably good repertoire of movies in all these languages under one roof is a trifle impossible.
# Their signing up cost is pretty much the same as any other DVD lending library offering quality videos. Also, the lowest subscription package is Rs.199 and allows one to borrow 4 movies in a month. This again, I feel, is quite reasonable and affordable.
# The convenience of being able to place an order for a movie on-line, having it delivered to and picked from an address of your choice is a blessing. More so with the kind of busy schedules we have these days, we hardly have the time or inclination to drive down to a DVD Library, browse through the collection and make up our minds on picking up a title. With Seventymm, we can do exactly that from the convenience of our home/office 24/7.
# The hassle of returning the movie within a stipulated time is another pain when one rents it from a conventional store. Invariably, I tend to get caught with unprecedented commitments just when I want to sit back, relax and watch a movie. I’ve had innumerable instances where I have paid for a movie borrowed from a DVD Library without getting to watch it. And with each passing day, I end up paying 100% of the rental charges as late fees, as is the case with most DVD libraries. With Seventymm, I can keep the movie as long as I want and do not have to pay anything extra. The only check is that I get to borrow only 2 movies at a time, and get my next set only when I have returned the current 2. This, to me, is absolutely fair.
These are the convenience elements which make Seventymm quite a welcome service.
But to be able to use this service effectively one needs to understand the concept and set one’s expectations right.
The service requires us to create and maintain a queue of at least 10 movies at any given point in time. The 2 movies that are delivered would be the first 2 from our list, subject to availability and could instead be any of the 10 movies that are specified in the queue. One needs to be prepared for that.
It would make sense to have a balanced combination of old and new movies, off beat and commercial cinema, Regional and English in one’s queue to ensure that availabilities and deliveries are managed without delays. Ideal thing to do would be to list all the movies one intends to watch so that you provide a wider choice to supplier for delivery.
This strategy has worked quite well for me and I have have manged to have a smooth flow of movies of my choice without any delays in the last couple of months that I have been using this service.
The flip side is that one really cannot use this service to make an impulsive decision to rent a movie on a particular day and be lucky enough to have it. I would recommend that for such situations one also maintains an account with a conventional video library so that you if you badly want to watch a particular movie the very same day, you just go and pick it up ( if it is available that is).Or alternatively buy it because DVD’s and VCD’s are now freely available for pretty much the same price as what one pays for borrowing.