New Zealand Company Solves DVD Rental Queue Lottery

By Bruce Stevens Staff Writer Monday, 24 September 2007

IT has been called the biggest bug-bear of online DVD rental: not knowing which of your selected choices is going to be dispatched next.

But now a New Zealand-based DVD rental company, Fatso.co.nz, has introduced new technology to their site which does away with the guesswork of which DVD rental title you’ll be receiving next.

Fatso.co.nz’s ‘Get Now’ system is essentially a real-time display of the titles that are currently in stock and available for immediate dispatch to you.

Get Now button

A ‘Get Now’ button appears next to any title that is currently in the system and ready for dispatch. Clicking the button will then add the title to your system for immediate dispatch in the post, and remove that title from the overall ‘Get Now’ list, so that other users can’t select it.

Traditionally, DVD rental sites do not make it clear whether a title is available for immediate dispatch or not.

“This is a fantastic little feature,” says Lyndsey Burton, DVD Rental reviews editor of DVD rental comparison site ChooseDVDRental.co.uk.

Lottery

“One the biggest downsides of online DVD rental has always been the ‘lottery’ of the so-called Rental Queue, where you simply don’t know which of your chosen titles in the queue is going to be sent out next.”

“This often leads to a war movie arriving on a Friday night when you’re more in the mood for a romantic comedy,” she added.

For now, the trademarked ‘Get Now’ system is exclusive to New Zealand’s Fatso.co.uk, but with its simple premise, it is unlikely to be long before a similar system starts to appear on UK-based DVD rental sites.

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