I started using Zip.ca last month, a Canadian by-mail DVD rental service. I did my homework, it was recommended by a trusty co-worker, and am really happy with the service so far.

What I like

• They have a huge selection of foreign films, festival films, documentaries, obscure films, animé/manga, and TV shows.
• You queue up what you want to watch, and the discs arrive a few at a time.
• You can tell them when you’ve returned a disc, and they’ll send you another one while it’s in transit.

What could be better

• Movies arrive in pretty much any order, in a fairly random distribution of genres. I have some ideas on how to improve this, and I’m told they respond well to user recommendations.
• The site is far from web2.0 and is a bit slow at times. Once I got used to the site, I found it worked well enough for me … it just wasn’t inspiring.
• The recommendation system is pretty tame, and the per-movie content a bit thin. I realize that a Canadian service has a pretty small customer base compared to an Amazon or a Netflix, but there’s room for improvement.

Stats so far …

• I’m receiving 4 DVDs per week¹
• Average delivery time (to or from) is 1.25 days
• Cost per DVD: $1.17²
• Great movies so far: 8
• So-so movies so far: 3
• Crappy movies so far: 1

Survey says …

I’ll stick with Zip until the summer, then will pause or reduce it until the fall. Zip has great value if you don’t have to see the newest thing the moment it’s released³, so it fits my personality well. I’m excited about the large selection of hard-to-find stuff, though I haven’t received much of it yet.

The best part? Not having to wander around the video store like an idiot: I can research directors, writers and actors, queue up movies at my leisure, and the movies magically appear on my desk a few days later.

1. I watch them while coding in the evenings ↩
2. 3/Unlimited plan, 3 months with 1-free month promo ↩
3. They have an option for getting a movie “now”, but it costs more ↩