This Independent Video Store Is Trying to Recreate Netflix’s DVD-by-Mail Service, But for Cinephiles

Netflix could also be executed sending individuals DVDs by the mail, however that doesn’t imply the remainder of us need to be happy with streaming all our motion pictures. This week, one of many world’s largest impartial DVD rental shops within the nation introduced it’s coming for Netflix’s scraps with its personal over-the-mail DVD rental service, and although it may cost greater than that now-defunct service, it makes up for it with the utter number of motion pictures on provide.

Scarecrow Video, positioned in Seattle, Washington, is among the largest impartial—and still-existing—video rental shops within the U.S. As reported by the parents at ComicBook.com, the impartial retailer launched its personal Lease by Mail service. New clients have to make an account, although membership might take days since every is reviewed by an precise human.

Scarecrow has an extended legacy going again to the Nineteen Eighties, and since then it has amassed a library of properly over 146,000 titles, in line with the shop’s personal web site. By comparability, Netflix streaming customers within the U.S. have entry to a library of round 6,000 motion pictures and TV reveals, in line with information compiled by the VPN Surfshark. Greater than half of these are Netflix originals.

New Scarecrow RBM customers can browse the corporate’s huge film assortment for any obtainable movies. The rub right here is that customers have a 14-day window to look at their content material, and that features the time it takes to ship. Although it’s precedence mail, which does promise delivery of between one to a few days, and in assessments Scarecrow mentioned it often takes round three days for these DVDs to achieve the east coast.

Customers can try as much as six DVDs or Blu-rays per order, and every flick prices a various quantity working from $3 all the way in which as much as $11, relying on the variety of discs contained in every field set. USPS delivery charges are a flat price of $12 per order, and every bundle comes with a pre-paid return mailer plus the discs provided in a tough plastic case. A lot of the retailer’s inventory is out there for lease by mail, however the listings don’t embody something that’s on VHS or in any other case uncommon and out-of-print materials. Late charges are price half the entire rental value paid.

Scarecrow is the final dwelling video rental retailer in Seattle, and since 2014 it’s existed as a 501c3 nonprofit and was declared a cultural museum by the State of Washington in 2019. In response to native studies from the time, the store examined its mail-rental service again in the course of the pandemic. House owners raised a number of hundred thousand {dollars} from followers and locals to revamp their web site and begin their order-by-mail enterprise.

Regardless that it’s nonetheless a comparatively small operation, impartial retailers might be able to hold mail-order DVDs round regardless of old-school rental corporations like Redbox transferring extra into streaming. Netflix is letting its final customers hold their last DVD leases earlier than the service goes bust, however anyone new on the lookout for extra bodily media of their life may need to go along with mom-and-pop outlets like Scarecrow in the event that they need to as soon as once more maintain their bodily content material of their bodily fingers.