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 DVD Unlimited was the country's first subscription-based DVD rental service and remains the biggest and one of the best. It was founded in December 2003 in Nelson, acquired by Sky in October 2004 and is now based in Auckland. According to a January 2007 New Zealand Herald story, DVD Unlimited is the market leader with 40-50% of the online DVD rental market.
DVD Unlimited's website is very well-designed with ease of browsing in mind. There are an impressive 27 genres listed, moreover, these are in turn are broken down into numerous subgenres--for instance under Drama there is Biography, Classic, Courtroom, Crime, Disaster, Medical, Military, Other, Political, Romantic, Sports, and Tearjerker. All that makes browsing much easier, helping you find just the sort of film you want to watch--a standard all DVD rental companies should mirror.
Their actual title display is also among New Zealand's best , with stars and director both hyperlinked, as well as length, classification, genre, region, video and screen formats as well as sound. One plus over the other systems, they have the customer reviews on the same, page, right under the title info and synopsis--much more convenient than having to click on another tab to see them. You can even click if you found someone's review helpful or not helpful, like on Amazon--something we've never seem a DVD rental company in any country implement.
We especially like their system for renting TV series--pick the entire series and you can see them all in order--they won't mail them out of order. For example, select Six Feet Under (19 DVDs) Seasons 1-4 as one option for your queue, and it will cycle through the 19 DVDs one-by-one--perfect. DVD Unlimited also stocks High Definition Blu-Ray discs, though it trails Movieshack in total numbers.
They also have an excellent selection of video games to choose from--the best of any combined DVD-games service. These include Xbox (212 titles), PS2 (533 titles), and Xbox 360 (a generous 242 titles), 109 PS3 games, only 45 Wii games, and even a few PC games (18 children's titles) to choose from.
There are some excellent account features as well; you can suspend your membership for up to two months, for instance when traveling on business or vacation. They also allow you to buy gift vouchers for friends.
Their customer service line is open Monday-Friday 9-4, while their mail room is also open Saturdays according to their FAQ. The phone number isn't listed where you'd expect it, under Contacts tab--only the internet question form is there, no doubt to cut down on the number of people calling the phone line. To be fair, they have implemented a detailed customer email response system which actually scans emails to see if a customer is angry (using words like "cancel" or "furious") as well as looking for keywords that can allow a question to be answered from the existing FAQ list. They also record all contacts a given customer has made, so if you have a lingering problem, at least there should be records, and you won't have to start afresh each time. They have the ability to speed the delivery times by customers marking the DVDs as returned on the website when they post the DVDs back; DVD Unlimited will send out the next discs immediately without waiting for the lot out to arrive.
That said, there are a fair number of complaints on forums and in the blogosphere about slow turnaround, though the common industry term for this, "throttling," is rarely used. Some have complained that mailings start quick, then slow down after the free trial, for instance.
Prices: DVD Unlimited offers a 2-week free trial, though Sky subscribers get an entire month free trial. They have one limited plan, 2 discs out, 4 discs total in the month for $17.00. More popular are their unlimited subscription plans--where you can get the best value--starting at 2 discs out at a time for $28.00, and their standard 3-disc plan for $38.00, 4 discs for $48.00, 5 discs for $58.00, and even a whopping 10 discs for $90.00.
Of note are their discount plans, where if you pay up from for 6 months at the 3-disc level, you pay $200 (saving $28 over the monthly price), and their 12-month plan where you pay $395 up front (saving $61).
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Rental Basics