waider | movie rental alternatives

Since one Justin Mason inadvertently brought my attention to another Irish DVDs-by-email company (MovieStar), I had a poke at their website; it's interesting to compare MovieStar with my own suppliers, ScreenClick:

both have a big-image splash pages, although the MovieStar one comes with some useful links (including, er, two to the page you're on)
both advertise €7.99 starter packages (MovieStar claims it's "the cheapest place in Ireland to rent DVDs" despite this)
"movie rentals to your door" vs "DVDs to your door"
both have a two-week free trial
both have near-identical four-step "how it works" diagrams
both have near-identical product offerings (same prices and restrictions; only ScreenClick offers the four-disc-per-month version, however)

The reason Justin mentioned MovieStar is that they've announced that they're going to be offering movies to download from May 1. Aside from the comments he's already made on his blog about this, I find it surprising that there's no mention of it on their website - their "Media Center" section is full of advertising, and there's no press releases section. Seems like if you're identical to your competitor in pretty much all respects, and you've come up with a differentiator, you should maybe plug it a little harder, right?

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yep, the differentiation is very hard to spot.

it's almost like they couldn't be arsed competing, and instead are happy to just price at about the same as the other guys, in order to carve out a 50:50 share of the market...

If you are thinking of giving your credit card details to the guys that own moviestar i suggest you read these - http://archives.tcm.ie/businesspost/2006/09/10/story17108.asp

http://www.oft.gov.uk/news/press/2006/125-06

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