Letters to the Editor
ScottyRVA
Published Letters: 49 Editor's Choice: 11
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Why Blockbuster is gaining on Netflix
[Read the article: Why Blockbuster is gaining on Netflix]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I’ve been using both services for a while now and I must say that the differences I have encountered are substantial.
Availability: Blockbuster is very sketchy on this in my experience. Many, and I do mean many movies a want are “short wait”, “long wait” and sometimes “very long wait”. By comparison, I have 500 movies in my Netflix queue right now, and every one of them is available now. Worse, on Blockbuster’s sight, if the film at the top of your queue is say “short wait” they move on and send the next available movie, which is fine except that one gets the feeling that if my “short wait” movie ever becomes available in the mean time, I won’t get it because of course I have films out. This might be an issue with Netflix as well I suppose, but as I said, 500 movies all marked NOW.
Quality: I’ve gotten scratched and broken discs from Netflix (had one today), but by and large, I have had more problems with Blockbuster in this regard, I have no explanation, but I can say that I regularly have to report problems with blockbuster discs. And this says nothing of the discs from the retail stores, which take quite a beating as well.
Internet interface: Frankly the Blockbuster web site sucks, both in comparison to Netflix and in its own right. It is clumsy, counter intuitive and for the most part useless to me. Also as a legally blind person, I can say that they have serious accessibility issues.
All that said, I like the idea of competition. Netflix just followed Blockbuster in letting me grab and move films up and down in my queue, I think that was a direct reaction on their part. There are films that blockbuster has that netflix doesn’t, I just watched the Talking Heads concert film “Stop Making Sense”, that film in Netflix is marked SAVE. So there’s certainly something to be said for that.
Finally, I agree with the other poster who noted that Netflix allowed us to get out of the dreadful video store, I like being able to go get another movie right away, but the atmosphere in Blockbusters is terrible and the selection as well, and what’s the use of convenience when you want to get out of the place so bad that you grab whatever’s at eye level and end up watching whatever “actioner” they have a wall full of, or some older film you’re familiar with but really don’t want to see that much… That’s why I fell in love with Netflix in the first place and now shout its praises.
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I think I have a little bit of a crush
[Read the article: The "Midwest Teen Sex Show"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Great site, very smart and funny, and I certainly hope it reaches the young people it is targeting. I particularly enjoyed Britney’s bio which I have translated from the original Spanish thusly:
"It grew hard and it grew fast with those children of Indiana in those nights of Indiana but she is only one girl of small town, living in a desert world. So it took the train from midnight that went to any place. Now it is working in the man every night and day. But never it lost a minute of worrisome dream on how they could have been things. Because she is beautiful not to matter what you say. Words cannot make fall it. ..Es like the wind is beautiful in each way...."
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Same old song and dance
[Read the article: Religious right may blackball Giuliani]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]It’s Sunday and I’m watching football and grinding my teeth over another awful preformance by my Ravens, so I’ll just bullet point my thoughts on this topic and leave the paragraph structure to another day.
This isn’t a real third party threat since there is no talk so far about anything down ticket.
If the Christian right wants to flex its muscles inside the GOP this is a good time to do it. 08 is looking like a disaster in the making for Republicans and if a protest candidate sinks Romney or Rudy even further, so what, a lesson about the importance of the Biblical base will have been sent with no real cost.
A protest candidate allows the right to participate in the election even with no hope of winning and this means that the networks of volunteers and donors stay active and energized even in a down cycle.
If the protest candidate can’t win, he doesn’t have to be serious about real issues with which the next president will have to deal, he can play to the crowd with a steady diet of gay abortionists pissing on the Ten Commandments in front of a secular public school. What economy, global warming or endless war?
The loss will allow the Christian right to indulge in one of its favorite pastimes, martyrdom. Modern conservatism was born in humiliating defeat and the temptation of pretending to suffer in the wilderness must be very seductive.
The machinations of the Christian right have a lot to do with the many intractable problems facing this nation over the last 20 years, it is sadly predictable that they would opt out of the process just as the chickens are coming home to roost. I expect them to make a tactical retreat to the sidelines for four years of complaining, only to return as the same old infernal engine of the GOP in 2012. How depressing. Although right at this moment the loss to Cleveland is more depressing... yeesh!