Zippity doodad

I love watching movies, but I have limited opportunities to do so.

The main culprit is having two kids with unpredictable bedtimes. If they don’t get to sleep until 10 p.m., it’ll be 11 or midnight before I can settle down to watch something.

I’m not about to go out to the video store at that time, particularly not to rent a move that has to be back in 24 hours. Often I’ll only have time to watch half the flick before bed, and watch the rest the next day. Not ideal, but still better than most TV fare.

Anyhow, on the suggestion of a colleague, I recently signed up for Zip.ca, a movie-by-mail service. (Actually it’s RogersVideoDirect.ca, which bought the service from Zip.)

The idea behind Zip is that you create a wish list of movies you’d like to see, and they mail you a DVD of the first available one. You keep it as long as you want, then mail it back in the provided self-addressed, stamped envelope. Once that is received, they send you the next one.

I’m signed up for the lowest level, which is two movies a month for a little over ten bucks. It’s no cheaper than the video store, but I don’t have to drive over there (twice) and there are no late fees. And the selection is incredible - 53,000 titles, at last count.

One enjoyable aspects they don’t talk about much is creating your Ziplist of movies you’d like to see. It’s sort of like making a Christmas wish list for your own entertainment. Whenever a friend tells you about a great movie they’ve seen, or a colleague reminds you of classic you’ve always been meaning to watch, or you read one of those top 100 lists, you can rush to the nearest computer and add it to your list.

And one day it will show up on your doorstep. That part is the best - finding a slim red envelope in your mailbox and tearing it open to see what you get this week. Mini Christmas mornings, twice monthly!

Not a bad little racket. But my brother-in-law had a point when he asked why this service is any better than a download system like Rogers on Demand, where you simply order the movie right through your TV and watch it then and there.

Zip has a few advantages. The selection is extraordinary: 53,000 films eclipses the 3,000 available on demand (and beats the pants off the selection in any video store.) And of course you can keep it as long as you want, whereas most on demand movies self-destruct after 24 hours.

Still, these advantages are temporary. It seems to me just a matter of time before all 53,000 or more are available online - that’s just a matter of storage and bandwidth, and we all know those are advancing to they point where they’re almost free. And the 24 hour window is completely arbitrary.

I think services like Zip.ca have about two more years before they become entirely obsolete. In fact, Zip thinks so too, which is why they’ve recently announced they are pushing into online movie delivery post haste.

After mailing customers a whopping six million DVDs, thus becoming Canada’s busiest online video service in just three years, Zip.ca is about to launch Zip.tv. The goal is to not only bypass Canada Post by enabling downloads of movies and TV shows, but also to offer free hosting of user-generated video content.

DVD-by-mail is, when you think about it, rather ridiculous.

You have digital content, I want digital content to play on my digital device. So let’s make a physical copy of it, and put it in a truck and carry it to my doorstep, and then ship it back again? Absurd.

We’ll no doubt look back at this in a few years and laugh. Actually, some are doing so already. At left is a Zip parody that was included in an entry to the CBC.ca 10th Anniversary contest by Sam Solomon from Montreal. Despite getting my vote, it wasn’t a finalist, which I think is a shame.

Anyhow, for the moment, I’m enjoying a weird little window in between technologies.

Here are the first five movies I received, in order:

• Hell’s Angels
• Ong-Bak: The Thai Warrior
• The Barbarian Invasions
• The Year of the Yao
• Shaun of the Dead

A B&W classic, a martial arts flick, a French-Canadian drama, a sports documentary and a zombie movie. A disparate lot, but they suit me just fine (I’ve greedily decided that these are movies for me, not my wife, who is usually too tired to watch movies on a school night.)

I’m taking recommendations… my Ziplist awaits.

Posted by: Paul Gorbould | 01-31-2007 | 02:01 PM
Posted in: Teh Internets | Television