Blockbuster

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Blockbuster offer online DVD rental plans that let you receive discs by post and return them in store.

They’ve been providing DVD rental on the high street for many years and are now focusing on driving forward their online business. They don’t offer game rental online yet but do have almost every film on DVD and Blu-Ray available in the UK for you to rent online.

Get two months for the price of one with Blockbuster

One Month Free

Get two months for the price of one with Blockbuster.

Sign up to their £12.99 plan and you'll get two months for the price of one. The plan gives you unlimited rentals with two discs out at once. Click through to learn more.

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Blockbuster services

Limited & unlimited deals

Adult films

Games

1st class postage

Blu-ray

Online streaming

Free trial

Contract required

About Blockbuster

Blockbuster Plans

All Blockbuster’s plans are listed above. They have 13 different plans based on a combination of in-store and online rental so it can be a bit difficult to get your head round. They also offer different trial periods / special offers with different plans.

On our homepage we’ve compared Blockbuster’s light plans which don’t include free in-store rentals (as these are the closest to plans offered by other providers). Their plans are the same price as LOVEFiLM’s for all packages except their starter product which is £1 more expensive (£4.99 compared to £3.99).

Blockbuster don’t currently offer a free trial - if you want to test it out you have to pay £1 (in return you get 14 days free). If you don’t return your discs within 14 days you’ll be charged for a full month. With such a short trial it can be difficult to make sure that you’ve cancelled and then returned your discs in time.

Choice

Blockbuster get full marks for the number of film titles and new releases they stock (both on DVD and Blu-Ray). Because they share stock with high street stores they buy more new releases than anyone else in the UK. This gives them quite a bit of muscle with the studios which means they offer exclusive titles that you can’t rent or buy anywhere else. They currently have 14 exclusive titles on their site - although these tend not to be major blockbusters so it’s probably not a deal breaker for most people.

You can also rent TV series through Blockbuster’s online site although it’s not obvious how big their catalogue of TV programmes is. We’ve searched for all the major TV shows and they all seem to be on there. You might struggle when it comes to more obscure, older content though as Blockbuster’s number one focus is films.

Surprisingly, Blockbuster don’t offer game rental online. If you want to rent games with Blockbuster it has to be done in store. They do offer combined plans for gamers but it’s important to note that the game rental part isn’t online. These plans simply give you movies online and then free game rentals in store.

Service

Blockbuster provide a very reliable service which uses first class post. We’ve been receiving Blockbuster DVDs for over a year now and have never had any issues. They’re also very quick at sending out new releases.

The DVDs come in plastic return envelopes rather than paper like other providers. The plastic wrappers are used once then discarded so the postal rental service is less environmentally friendly than some other options.

One of the things that makes Blockbuster’s online DVD rental service different to LOVEFiLM’s is that they’ll include the bonus DVD with extra features as part of the same rental. Box sets are still split up into individual discs though and there’s no guarantee that these will come in the correct order (they’re treated as separate rentals).

Another unique selling point is that you can return the disc to your local Blockbuster store - meaning you’ll get your next one even quicker. Quite handy if you have a Blockbuster video shop near by. You can also reserve DVDs online to pick up in store.

There isn’t currently any on-demand content available to watch online. With LOVEFiLM pioneering movie streaming as a way to rent easily online, Blockbuster must be thinking about making moves into this area. There is currently no evidence of this although watch this space.

Delivery time

Blockbuster use first class post and are very efficient with their turn around of discs. We think that you’ll have no complaints in terms of delivery time. Plus, if you want to get your hands on films straight away you can always link your online plan with a local Blockbuster store.

Website features

Want to just rent the latest movies? Then Blockbuster is a good choice and the site is easy to use.

If you also want to rent TV programmes, you might find it a bit more tricky to browse. They do offer box sets of the latest TV series but they‘re not easy to find - you need to know exactly what you want to watch and search for it.

We’ve pulled out some key features of the website below.

1) Trailers and ratings

Blockbuster have recently introduced trailers pulled from You Tube into their site content. Whilst the player isn’t as wide-screen as LOVEFiLM’s it does make the process of choosing a film much more enjoyable. You’ll also find information about the film and user ratings but there aren’t any reviews. It’s much less of an online community than LOVEFiLM’s site and customer interaction is limited to rating films.

2) Recommendations

The recommendation engine seems to work pretty well and it’s easy to hop between films that are similar. It does seem to be limited to just showing films that people also recommended rather than making recommendations based on theme.

Special offers

Currently Blockbuster are offering two months for the price of one when you sign up from DVDRentalCompare.com

You’ll pay just £12.99 for two months worth of DVD Rental. You’ll get two discs sent out and you can watch as many as you like. If you’re quick about returning them we think you could easily watch two a week, that’s 16 discs over two months for just £12.99 (only 81p per disc). Sounds like good value to us!

Click here to get 2 months for the price of 1 at Blockbuster

One Month Free

Get two months for the price of one with Blockbuster.

Sign up to their £12.99 plan and you'll get two months for the price of one. The plan gives you unlimited rentals with two discs.

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