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[bryant]

Peerflix sounded really intriguing. It's a service that hooks up people who want to trade DVDs. You tell them all the DVDs you want to trade, and every now and then someone says "Hey, I want that DVD," and Peerflix says "Hey, send that DVD to her!" You do so, which earns you Peerbucks, which you can then redeem to get DVDs from other people.

It turns out that it's really emulating Netflix rather than EBay, though. When you send someone a DVD, you just send them the DVD -- no case or anything. The idea is more that you're lending them your DVD (you can even automatically request the DVD back when they're done) rather than trading. Which does not so much gratify me, since I don't want empty DVD boxes littering up my apartment. Time to drag 'em all down to CD Spins.

Still, could be cool for others, so consider this a pointer.

Comments

[rfrancis]

I'm a Peerflixer, although not a greatly experienced one. My approach is this: I took several DVDs I wouldn't miss in the least, and that I didn't think to be especially super-neat-valuable (no boxed sets trilogies, no TV series sets, etc. Those I took to ebgames and got ripped off for there, instead, I'm sure. But I digress.) Not a lot -- less than a dozen, definitely. Everything I ask for on Peerflix is something I want to see, but don't intend to keep. (If I'm going to keep it, I'll want the box.) Consequently, I don't ever have a need to add more into the cycle, as the stuff I get replaces the stuff that goes out -- I'll always have roughly the same amount available to send off. (Which is not to say I couldn't add to it if I felt like it.)

And yeah, there's the possibility that eventually I may just put on my want list the DVDs I started out with and put them in their boxes (which I'm keeping, as it's not many) and then chuck them at ebgames or whoever. In the meantime it gets me $1.36 rentals ($.99 plus postage, you know) for as long as I care to keep them, which is good for me as I watch movies too infrequently for Netflix to be that great a deal.

I would say to your readers, to whom I guess I'm not actually writing now since I'm lazily commenting to your lj feed (sorry about that), that once you join and find it groovy enough to go with, be prompt about getting your credit card info attached to your account -- the system didn't remind me that I hadn't done that and just kind of quietly didn't do much until I finally sussed out what was wrong.

Oh yeah, payment: basically they take $4.95 at a time from your credit card then debit that until you've done 5 $.99 trades, then hit it again for $4.95, etc etc. You pay your own postage, which for one DVD will be the standard $.37. Mailer envelopes are free -- I had troubles earlier getting them to SEND me more, but I think it is not unrelated to my screwup regarding credit card info.

Anyway, I've sent out five DVDs this week and two arrived recently with four more currently en route (I had some peerbux from prior mailings) so it's definitely moving for me. Unlike Netflix, where you have some hope of an ordered queue, you pretty much take what you get from your pool of wanted DVDs, but that's not a big deal to me (if there's an ordering problem like with a series, I just don't put the next one in the want list until I've gotten the prior one. Easy enough.)

Anyway. Yes. I'm doing that.

-R

[bryant]

More people comment here than comment over at the main page, go figure. (Well, it's easy to figure: LJ has a better community commenting system.)

I'm glad to hear it works as a rental system. Maybe I'll keep a couple of DVDs away from CD Spins and try that out, hm.