Netflix

Bryan and I stumbled upon a free trial of Netflix. To be honest, I've always kind of doubted the Netflix's concept. Why would I want to wait to receive movies in the mail, when I can hop in my car, check out the shelves at the local video store and have the immediate satisfaction of a movie in my hand? Well, the truth is, a trip to our local video store is rarely all that "satisfying." We often find ourselves meandering aimlessly through the New Releases trying to remember what movies were in the theatres that we'd thought we'd wanted to see. Then we find something that looks mildly interesting and head home with it. It's generally a hit or miss set of circumstances, and believe me, most of the time we miss.

So, we've been evaluating whether or not we want to keep this Netflix subscription. For $9.99 a month, which is roughly the cost of 2-3 rentals at the store, we've received at least 1 new movie each week. So, for the price of 2-3 movies a month, we can receive 6-8. From a strict cost-basis, it seems worthwhile. BUT you have to consider that we're not likely to rent 2-3 movies each month. This is where Netflix is GENUIS. You maintain a queue of movies to "rent." When you return one, they send you the next one one our list. We added things to our queue that we would never rent from a video store, but since you're essentially getting 2 rentals for the price of one, you sort of figure why not. Movies like Disney's Cars, which I legitimately wanted to see, but would never have rented. So far, we've really enjoyed the service. It's been fun to open up the mail and have a movie waiting. It makes random nights of the week spontaneously special and fun.