Has anyone tried Video Movie House ?

[YKdvd]

I just ran into another reference to these guys, got curious, and did a little looking. Doing an empty search on their site seems to bring back all their titles - around 3500. Like ZIP you can do a partial signup without a credit card and add things to a queue, etc. The queue requires Flash to work and seems to provide drag-and-drop reordering - fairly ambitious, and especially as a Mac user I'd be a little worried about glitches in fancy stuff like this. There seem to be availability indicators in the queue, but the few titles I put in as a test all had a full green bar except "Hitch (Fullscreen)", which had a small red square (Widescreen was full green). I don't know if this means it is all rented out or never ordered in the first place.

I found their most recent SEC filing. It contains interesting phrases like "the Company had limited cash resources, and an accumulated deficit of $905,820. These factors raise substantial doubt about the Company's ability to continue as a going concern", "Approximately 98% of the Company's sales are realized through its sub-distributor relationships with Amazon.com and Half.com", and "In order to adequately fund this expansion, the Company will need to raise sufficient capital for inventory and automated processing equipment".

They seem to be mainly a sell-through storefront (their inventory URLs have Amazon ASIN identifiers embedded in them) and a seller of their own new/used inventory on Amazon, etc. They also seem to have some sort of penny-stock presence. To be fair, that "going concern" warning seems to have been there for 2-3 years now, and may just be auditor boilerplate for undercapitalized companies. But I doubt Netflix is quaking in their boots, and I doubt they are in a position to drop a quarter million or so to get into the upper inventory leagues.

I'm assuming much of their current business is with US customers, even though they are located in BC, and they may be set up to charge in US dollars because of this. Looking back through their reports is rather interesting - the company seems to have spun off a few year ago from a Nevada corporation, into a BC company called "Flamingos Beach Resort" (I'm not kidding; presumably it was a conveniently existing shell). I'm guessing the Nevada company had somehow acquired a person or some computer code it didn't want, and the guy who wrote it had a BC connection and went out on his own. All this entrepreneurial stuff is a mystery to me...

Anyway, it looks like they are starting out in the Canadian market, but looking to expand into the States (the report talks about two warehouses). In any case, it doesn't look like the answer to anyone's prayers right now.

[YKdvd]

Just 30 minutes of Google and reading...

They supposedly did a million dollars in net sales the first three months of this year (although with minimal profit), so they certainly have more visible means of support than the bucolic prevaricators of Blairmore (aka Canflix). As best as I can tell, in pre-rental mode they had a certain stock of used DVDs and VHS tapes which they sell through Amazon and eBay and their website, and presumably new stuff was sell-through from wholesalers.

They didn't seem bright enough to register videomoviehouse.CA, though - it looks like a cybersquatter grabbed it last fall.

Note their BC address (Abbottsford) and US address (Sumas, WA) are just across the border from each other. They already sell stuff on both the US and CA Amazon sites from these locations, so they must be moving stuff one way or the other already for shipment. I wouldn't be surprised if most or all of the rental discs aren't actually in one of the locations, and dumped across the border to the other's postal facilities. It would seem strange to duplicate actual storage and packing operations.

I noticed a press release on the VMH site for their affiliate program - it looks like they are going to be aiming this at fundraising groups like schools and sports teams. So the next time kids come to your door, they may be trying to sell you a DVD membership instead of a chocolate bar!

[YKdvd]

I've added VMH to my chart - it looks like they are around 3500-3600 titles. I didn't do an actual trial, but did sign up without going as far as credit card info to browse the queue system. The Flash-based queue looks like it could get very aggravating - it is a small fixed-height thing (about 6-7 titles usually), and scrolling seems to require a click per scroll.

I can't see any reason to choose them over the ZIP/VHQ combo.

[pnear]

Having been bitten by Movies For Me's billing practices, I took the time to read their T&Cs before signing up for the trial. (The flash-based interface sounds cool and the pricepoint seems about right for me).

In the T&Cs, it states that you must cancel the membership and return all movies within 14 days to avoid charges. This would seem like an almost impossible condition to meet if there are movies in the mail on their way to or from their location when you cancel.

I've sent them an email asking for clarification, and asking if it is reasonable to cancel within 14 days and then get the movies in the mail and on their way back to them immediately - ie a grace period for shipping lag.

Pete

[YKdvd]

About the pricepoint - note that the 3/$17.99 displayed on their site is in US dollars (it matches the NetFlix/Blockbuster price in the US), which would make it around C$22. I'm not sure if they charge Canadian customers in US dollars, or have a Canadian rate (although there is no other pricing listed anywhere).

VHQ has a 3-disc plan for $19.95, a much larger selection, and presumably better delivery times for Ontario with whatever their Toronto processing centre entails.

As for the Flash-queue, you can sign up with VMH in "pre-send" mode, much like ZIP, without giving a credit card. This lets you put movies in the queue and see how it works. Presumably your 14-day period only starts when you supply the credit card info and they ship, but you might want to use another name/address for testing just in case.

I've included a screenshot below. The movie titles are NOT links - you can't click on them to bring up the movie detail page as you might expect. And because they spell out the entire rating, PG-13 movies take up four lines of the display window, which is small and cannot be resized. All in all, I'd say this queue would be maddening for people with a large number of movies. The main reason I assume they went with Flash (aside from a "cool" factor") was that you can do "drag-and-drop" reordering moves within the queue by grabbing the hatched square on the top right of each entry and moving it where you want.

[YKdvd]

Came across this thread while searching for a different one, and just for fun checked their latest SEC filing. I found this interesting little paragraph:

A third source of revenues is currently from monthly subscription fees collected from online DVD rentals. Revenues to date have been negligible and expansion plans in this area of operations are currently on hold. Rental operations will continue as management evaluates this area of operations. Management feels that it has insufficient capital at present to expand its rental operations and until it has the necessary capital to do so, efforts of expansion in this area of operations would create excessive strain on the company's cash flow. With the advent of access to a much wider and lower priced inventory available through DVDmarketplace.com, management feels that future expansion in this area of operations is promising but again the ultimate decision to expand more aggressively is dictated by the availability of capital.

Obviously they aren't setting the rental world on fire just yet...