Christmas Guide to DVD Rental Gift Subscriptions

By Bruce Stevens Staff Writer Friday, 14th December 2007

DVD Rental Gift Voucher last orders before Christmas: If you're thinking of buying someone a games or DVD rental voucher this Christmas, you don't have long! DVD Rental Sites • LoveFilm: 17 December, 3pm • Blockbuster: 18 or 19 December • CinemaParadiso: 24 December, midnight • MyMovieStream: 19 December (for gift voucher); 24 December (for email) Games Rental Sites • GamesMonster: 24 December, midnight • LoveFilm (Games): 17 December, 3pm

IF you’re buying your loved one a DVD or boxset this Christmas…what the hell are you doing? You could give them unlimited DVDs that will last through to the summer instead thanks to the handful of online DVD rental sites offering gift vouchers for unlimited film rentals this Christmas.

If the idea of Christmas to you is more about the hell of a last minute dash through the shopping mall on the 24th than the idyll of sleigh-bells and cranberry scented candles, then you’ve really been missing a trick.

You can sign up a lucky recipient to receive a well presented ‘gift box’ – or, if you have left it really late, an email with their ‘golden ticket’ – without having to leave the house.

We’ve compiled a breakdown of the DVD rental companies offer gift vouchers for their service this Christmas. Think of it as our little present to you!

LOVEFILM

Where to sign up
Click here to go straight to LoveFilm, then select the ‘Gifts’ tab along the top.

How you’ll get it
You can choose to receive the DVD rental gift box by email, by post or by personalised print-out.

• Email: The email arrives as an e-card and you can specify the date you want it to arrive for the recipient.



• Personalised Printout: An ingenious little web-tool, lets you create a customised gift certificate which includes your name, the recipients name, a greeting as well as a 46 character message. Best of all is you can see it being created in real-time on your screen, before printing it out in colour onto some good quality paper to present inside a card or envelope.



• Gift Box: Lovefilm’s gift boxes are extremely substantial. No tacky slips of paper in envelopes here - the Lovefilm gift-box is something you could almost wrap up and put under the tree. The gift box is a matte-finished glossy card box about the size and depth of a thick magazine. Inside the box is the subscription voucher – with personalised message (see above) on glossy card. The inside of the box is colourfully decorated with instructions on how to use Lovefilm service. If you spend more than £35 on a voucher, the box will also contain a choice of five movie related Rough Guide or TimeOut guide books (specifically TimeOut’s 1000 movies to change your life, The Rough Guide to Chick Flicks, The Rough Guide to Gangster Movies, The Rough Guide Comedy Movies or The Rough Guide to Horror Movies). You can choose to have the gift box delivered to you or direct to the recipient.

What it costs
You can choose between a 4 month, 6 month or 12 month DVD rental gift subscription which start at £19 for the limited 2-DVDs-in-a-month package for 4 months and going up to £160 for a combined year’s worth of unlimited DVD and games rental.

What happens when the Gift Subscription ends?
Recipients of a LoveFilm gift voucher will need to register with LoveFilm before they can start using the service. This will include inputting a valid debit or credit card. Recipients will automatically become full paying customers unless they cancel their membership and return all discs before the end of the gift subscription period.

To be safe, you must order before…
Before 3pm on 17th of December.

Anything else
The 2 cheapest packages (£19 for 4 months; £27 for 6 months) do not qualify for the giftbox. The cheapest giftbox package is the 12 months Capped 2-DVDs-in-a-month voucher which costs £49.

Recipients of the voucher must be at least 18 years old, UK residents and have a valid debit or credit card.

Gift Voucher Scheme Rating

BLOCKBUSTER

Where to sign up
Click here to go straight to Blockbuster, then select the ‘Gift Vouchers’ link halfway down the page on the left hand menu.

How you’ll get it
Blockbuster will send the voucher in the mail to the recipient address you specify when purchasing the gift voucher.

What it costs
You can choose between a 3 month, 6 month or 12 month DVD rental gift subscription which start at £25 for unlimited 1-DVD-at-a-time package for 3 months and going up to £150 for a year’s worth of unlimited 3-DVDs-at-a-time rental.

What happens when the Gift Subscription ends?
In order to use their voucher, the recipient will have to register with Blockbuster which includes inputting their credit/debit card details. If the recipient doesn’t cancel their membership at the end of the voucher’s period, they will automatically be charged as a full-paying member. They will have 3 days to return any outstanding DVDs after the subscription ends.

To be safe, you must order before…
18th or 19th December if you want to guarantee to receive the gift voucher. Order earlier if possible.

Anything else
The recipient of the gift voucher must be over 18 years of age and have a valid credit or debit card.

Gift Voucher Scheme Rating

CINEMAPARADISO

Where to sign up
Click here to go straight to CinemaParadiso, then click the ‘Buy/Redeem Gift’ link at the very top of the page.

How you’ll get it
The CinemaParadiso gift subscription comes in the form of a short gift code. You can either have the gift code sent to yourself so you can write it into a card for the recipient, or leave it to CinemaParadiso to email the recipient on your chosen date. It’s not the kind of thing that’ll draw gasps from granny, but there is the advantage that the recipient can redeem it any time over the next year.

What it costs
You can choose between a 1 month, 2 month, 3, 4, 6 or 12 month DVD rental gift subscription which start at just £5.99 (perfect for Secret Santa gifts) for capped 1-DVD-at-a-time package for 1 month and going up to £149.90 for a year’s worth of unlimited 3-DVDs-at-a-time rental.

What happens when the Gift Subscription ends?
Before using the gift code, the recipient will have to register with CineParadiso and input their debit or credit card details. The recipient will have to cancel their membership and return all DVD’s before the final expiration date of the gift subscription.

To be safe, you must order before…
Because there is no physical voucher or gift box, you can safely leave this one to the last minute and order on the 24th of December!

Gift Voucher Scheme Rating

MYMOVIESTREAM

Where to sign up
Click here to go straight to MyMovieStream, then click the large ‘Christmas Gift Vouchers’ banner in the middle of the homepage.

How you’ll get it
MyMovieStream issues lovely looking gift vouchers with a personalised message on the back. The voucher can be sent directly to the recipient, or to you to give to the recipient on Christmas day. As a back up, the recipient will also receive an email on Christmas day containing the voucher code – just in case Santa gets held up with the post!

What it costs
You can choose between a 1, 3, 6 or 12 month DVD rental gift voucher, starting at just £5.99 for capped 4-DVD’s-in-a-month package for 1 month and going up to £179.88 for a year’s worth of unlimited 3-DVDs-at-a-time rental. Oh, and they’ll throw in a free 6 months’ worth of rentals with that last package, making it actually a Christmas gift that will last until June 2009!

What happens when the Gift Subscription ends?
In order to activate the gift voucher, the recipient will have to become a MyMovieStream member which involves them entering their credit or debit card details. When the gift subscription ends, the recipient must cancel their subscription or they will continue to be charged the prevailing monthly rate for the package they are on.

To be safe, you must order before…
19th December if you want to guarantee to receive the gift voucher. However you can still order right up to the 24th if you don’t mind the recipient simply receiving their gift via email!

Anything else
The recipient of the gift voucher must be over 18 years of age and have a valid credit or debit card.

Gift Voucher Scheme Rating

GAMESMONSTER

Where to sign up
Click here to go straight to GamesMonster, then select the ‘Gift Vouchers’ button at the very top of the page.

How you’ll get it
GamesMonster currently only offers gift subscription delivery by email in the form of a voucher code. You can opt to send it immediately to the recipient, or on a specific date. There is unfortunately no easy way of sending it to yourself so that you can write the gift code into a card, or print it out as the voucher gets sent direct to the recipient’s email address. One way around this is to put your own email address under the Recipient Email field, and then remind them to change it back once they have signed up. A bit clumsy.

What it costs
You can choose between a 3-month or 6-month games rental gift voucher, both offering unlimited rentals with 1 game out at a time. The 3-month package costs £22.99 and the 6-month package costs £47.99.

What happens when the Gift Subscription ends?
The recipient of the voucher will have to sign up (and enter their credit/debit card details) on the GamesMonster site in order to redeem their subscription. Recipients must return all games before cancelling their subscription at the end of the subscription period, or they will start being charged as a full-paying member.

To be safe, you must order before…
Because the gift subscription is sent via email, you can safely leave this one to the last minute and order on the 24th of December!

Anything else
The recipient of the gift voucher must be over 18 years of age and have a valid credit or debit card.

Gift Voucher Scheme Rating

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