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BD

As much as I've been a staunch supporter of Netflix for six years, things have changed a little bit since I decided to rent Blu-Ray DVDs from them. With the recent announcement about charging three dollars a month instead of one dollar a month to access their BD library, I'm still sticking with Netflix, but I've become tempted to --gasp-- return to Blockbuster to see about the availability of certain BD titles.

I have not been to a Blockbuster in over six years for many reasons, but lately, I want to see if they have BDs more readily available than Netflix. As convenient as doing everything through the mail is, I'm not so sure waiting almost three months to get certain high-demand titles. I mean, come on, did I really have to wait that long to see Mamma Mia!, a movie that was greatly derided by many people? In the old days (read: ten years ago, when I regularly went to Blockbuster) all I really had to do was wait until the next week to rent a copy of a hot item.

Yet I still have a grudge against the Blockbuster stores I used to go to. For whatever reason, they did not carry classic movies, like The Apartment, Monkey Business, and Touch of Evil, on DVD. Even though those movies were readily available on DVD to buy from places like Amazon.com and Best Buy, Blockbuster only carried them on crappy, worn-out VHS tapes. There was so much shelf space devoted to crappy new movies that were "Guaranteed to Be There."

It was then when I thought my tastes were not in line with the kind of customer Blockbuster aimed for. At that time, they didn't carry TV shows on DVD, so on a whim, I signed up with Netflix. I rented The Ben Stiller Show and the original, BBC version of The Office, and I haven't looked back, until now.

I'm definitely not going to drop Netflix, but I don't want to wait three months to finally get to see Quantum of Solace and Tales from the Black Freighter on BD.

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