Blockbuster Video is a well known name, and now so is Netflix. As we compare online DVD rental services from the pair there are some clear benefits and some hard choices to make.

Blockbuster was late to the "movies by mail" party but has one huge benefit; Blockbuster has physical store locations. If you don't want to wait for the mailman you can go to a local Blockbuster and exchange your TotalAccess DVD, however you MUST have a membership at a Blockbuster store.

Online you'll find that Blockbuster's website is colorful and has an online movie tracker to help you keep up with what you've rented. Netflix has a wonderfully clean website and it was easy to surf and much less distracting than Blockbuster. Neflix also has more titles, and cost less to join at the lowest level. Both services give pleny of info on the movies that they rent and offer stong search abilities. In comparing these two I remember that movie rental was the goal, and Netflix has more movies.

In the end we selected Netflix as the editor's choice because when we went to Blockbuster to sign up, the contract included signing up for a bunch of other stuff (known in the marketing world as co-reg. or co-registration) which we thought was sort of underhanded.