Netfilx works for Saipan

After the movie theater closed, and we started having more trouble getting movies at the video rental shops, we joined Netflix and have been getting our DVD rentals mailed to us.

I'm a big proponent supporting our local businesses, but when the service fails me, I go elsewhere. At our "one week rental" place, the videos are always out because someone else has them for the week. I'm not sure I understand the business model. And our mom and pop video store recently went nutty. The last time we returned a DVD, the clerk insisted that we had returned it in a different case. We returned it in the same case we got it in, complete with all the labels and bar codes, but for some reason she insisted we peeled these labels off of the original case and affixed them to the case we were now returning them in. "Why in the world would we do that?" "I don't know, but I know you did." "Listen, why don't I just pay you for a new case. It's like two bucks, right?" "I don't the money, I just want the truth." And the next couple of times we went in, she gave us the "tsk tsk" for having pulled some sort of a case switcheroo. Life is weird enough without gettin silently scolded every time you go to rent a DVD, so we looked to Netflix.

Netflix works great. You pay a monthly fee, they mail DVD's to you, and you mail them back whenever you're done watching them -- no due date. There are no shipping charges, and they include a mailer to send it back to them. You just open an account with them, create a list (or queue) of movies you want to receive, and as soon as they receive one back from you, they mail the next one out. They mail out of Honolulu, so the total turn-around time to Saipan is about 4-5 days.

The monthly fee varies depending on how many DVD's you want out at a particular time. If you get one at a time, it's around $5.99 per month.

I love it. We are watching some classics that the kids are really enjoying and that you just can't find here, like The Princess Bride, and Big. Any time I hear of a good movie, or see a preview that I like, I just add it to my queue. It's because of Netflix that I know I'll be watching Gandhi next week. You can browse by genre -- Drama, Comedy, Foreign, Documentary, etc. They also have nice collection of TV shows on DVD.

It's another option for cheap entertainment here on the rock.