Blake Schwendiman's Blog and Blook

Back in the early 1980's I remember when the concept of video rental came to my home town. A local entrepreneur, Nyle Fullmer, opened a video rental store on Main street in Rexburg. Back then you could not only choose from a massive selection of about 25 VHS tapes, but you could also rent a VHS player (because as hard as it is to believe now, not everyone owned any type of video player).

The process was pretty ugly. You had to hope that there were still players available, then you had to lug a 40 pound suitcase-like bag of equipment out of the store to your home, then hook everything up, watch your movies, then take it all back. At the time, the wow factor of watching movies at home outweighed the negatives (unless you happened to end up with long-term back troubles from porting the equipment around, of course).

Things have obviously gotten better since then, but I do have to say that Netflix.com has shown me that there was a gap in convenience that needed to be filled. Netfilx has done it. I love Netflix. You pick movies online, they come in the mail (often the next day), you watch them, you drop them in the return envelope, you're done. In the meantime you can keep the movies as long as you want/need. There are no late fees. And for me, I can't believe how much more convenient it is than running back and forth to the video store (where I can never find the new releases anyway).

You can get started with Netflix.com for just $10 per month, too. Now that is convenience.