DVD on Rent - Home Entertainment Redefined

While driving down to office yesterday, my mind, vacillating between the impressions of Scarlett Johansonn and the regressions of recession, took notice of a huge hoarding. The hoarding, put up just in front of Convergys building, displayed the release of Nolan's blockbuster "The Dark Knight" on DVD. The DVDs were available for sale at BigHome Video, and for rent on BigFlix.

Suddenly, my mind reacted, as it sensed a golden opportunity of having the illegal DVD-Rip of Heath Ledger's masterpiece on my Laptop. However, some how the impression of BigFlix remained and I decided to research about BigFlix on reaching office.

After I was done with my daily log-in rituals in office, I decided to research "Bigflix" on the web. I logged onto their website. A 10 minute pursuing made me aware of what business is BigFlix into. BigFlix, an ADA group of company, is one of India's largest DVD Rental Chain, with over 18K+ movie and television titles, and franchisee in 10 Indian cities.

I was aware of the "DVD on Rent" culture prevalent in United States, but the same culture spreading its root in India took me aback. Moreover, the whole thought of freedom from locating torrents and then patiently downloading movies, incited an interest in me of subscribing to a DVD rental company, to satisfy my obsession with movies. So, I decided to research the DVD Rental market to ascertain the DVD rental company I will be subscribing to.

Following points may represent salient features of my research:

• Major Players: The major players in the DVD rental space in Delhi NCR would be BigFlix, Seventymm, Moviemart and CatchFlix.

• USPs: The USPs of almost all the players is their huge inventory, online cataloging, searching and ordering features, and free home delivery and picking facility of the DVDs.

• Key Differentiators: According to me, the key differentiators are inventory and pricing.

I tried establishing the domination of the inventory by searching for two main types of titles. Firstly, I searched for DVDs of Oscar winning titles and then for DVDs of relatively lesser known Hindi titles. The result, BigFlix and Seventymm provided the best online inventory results.

As far as pricing is concerned, I found BigFlix providing more flexible and cheaper plans as compared to others, especially when compared to Seventymm.

• Discounts and Schemes: During the course of my research, I realized that most of the major players come up with discounts and schemes regularly.

At present, BigFlix is providing upto 50 % discount on subscription fees of various subscription plans thereof. Moreover, Seventymm also has a Christmas offer running, which provides upto 40 % discount on all its plans.

• Other Differentiators: Shipping flexibility, and Rental policy.

Finally, I decided to subscribe to BigFlix, my decision driven by the following factors:

1. Reliance on the ADA brand name
2. Better flexibility of subscription plans
3. BigFlix store located in the neighborhood

I am expecting my first lot of rented DVD's (“Jane tu ya Jane Naa” and “Goodfellas”) to be delivered to me on Saturday. Looking forward to watching both the titles on the weekend.

Adios!