1 April 08: We've added the UK's newest adult DVD rental service, Purple Pictures. We continue to watch for when Lovefilm's pickup of Amazon's DVD rental service is put into place--for now we gather they still use the old, excellent Amazon system.

1 February 08: Added Films2u, small, 2,000 film delivery service, also dropped Moviepigeon , 1DVD, and 99pDVD which went out of business. We also discovered small Northern Ireland site DVD Choice wasn't dead after all and reinstated their review, bringing the UK's total to 20 online DVD rental services. We also noted that Lovefilm has relaunched their telephone customer service support, this time 7 days a week--very impressive.

1 January 08: No changes this month either, but we look forward to charting the course of the UK DVD rental industry in the year ahead.

We were tipped off that MyMovieStream has a new powered-by site for Wilkinson, but as it's a clone with the same content and just a new colour scheme, we aren't writing a separate review for it. Still, it shows MMS is propering and expanding, which can only be good for competition industry-wide.

1 December 07: No changes this month, but we've noticed visits to the site are way up, which is excellent.

1 November 07: Major site review, updating pricing structures and new screenshots of every rental site. We moved up Visioneers, the Christian/family DVD service given its new relaunch, with a much-improved engine and larger inventory. There have been many pricing changes, like Lovefilm's offer, for only 4 quid until December, of 2 discs capped per month, and Amazon dropping prices across the board, and venturing from its capped model into unlimited rentals, something we'll need to monitor to see if the system can handle the increased demand. We also moved Movieconnect up a bit above Cinebazar (which we're concerned may have gone out of business as it's down)--same with Moviepigeon, which is also down.

1 September 07: Updated charts to reflect two special offers on: Lovefilm is offering a limited time 21-day free trial, which is rare in the industry these days. Also, MyMovieStream is offering subscriber to keep a free DVD, in conjunction with The Sun, selected from several top recent titles.

1 August 07: No changes this month either.

1 July 07: No changes, though the rain of the past month has kept our site visits higher than most summers, people indoors watching DVDs instead of outside in the bad weather.

1 June 07: Nothing new this month, as the DVD rental industry goes into its traditional winter "hibernation" with rentals in general (and hits to our site) decreasing as people spend more time outdoors. We'll continue to track DVD rental trends through the summer in time for the spike in rentals and interest (which we find come right around 1 October each year.)

1 May 07: We've removed 8 dead rental companies this month, bringing the total active UK DVD rental companies to their lowest ever 22 (41 such sites have now gone out of business since we started the site in early 2005). We started by removing small independents DVD Choice and DVDtoHome from near the bottom of our charts. We also culled some Lovefilm "powered" by" sites which either ceased working or which just have an opening page to a straight Lovefilm subscription Dixons, Five, Virgin, Tiscali, Pearl and Dean, LastMinute, and MyMovies, leaving six active Lovefilm powered by sites.

6 April 07: No ranking changes this month again. The only major change is MyMovieStream's acquisition of Moviemine, assimilating all existing customers into the MMS system. We’ve been impressed with both companies over the years, but are at least pleased that Moviemine’s customers will be treated well at MMS.

1 March 07: No changes this month to the rankings, which we think are still just about right after our big January changes. The biggest news in the industry of late is Blockbuster's raft of new improvements, added to our updated Blockbuster review as well as a blog post.

1 February 07: We have no changes to the site rankings in February after the major, New Year moves. Traffic has been very high in January, logging 15,155 visits (our third highest month ever!) , and 265,892 visitors since the site was launched in February 2005. Thanks to all our visitors for making us the top guide for DVD rentals in the UK!

4 January 07: This month we decided to move Blockbuster to the number one spot above Lovefilm, the first change to our top spot in two years. Blockbuster has come a long way after re-energizing its online effort in the past eighteen months or so, known for its swift mailings, sending bonus discs for free instead of charging an extra rental, and high stocks of new releases. Reports of some Lovefilm service problems following the October merger with Screenselect, plus Lovefilm's one quid price increase on the most popular three-disc service, tipped the balance in Blockbuster's favour. Both are excellent companies, nearly neck-and-neck in terms of quality, but we do judge Blockbuster is the slightly better choice for most renters.

After a survey of the sites, we've noted three Lovefilm powered-by sites have closed down including ITV, FilmFour, and MSN. This brings the total of active DVD sites out there to its lowest since 2004; 31 sites (discounting Lovefilm affiliates, that still makes it 18 independent companies.)

We moved Movieconnect up a bit, as we haven't been getting poor feedback as this time last year. We also dropped both ViewDVD and MoviePigeon given their continued front-page listing of old films and apparent failure to update or expand holdings in many months. These movements were part of a general revamp of our star rating system; too many of the sites were clumped at the top with little to distinguish them, and we feel spreading them out and awarding fewer 5 star ratings makes the rankings more useful.

1 December 06: Our monthly update adds Hoad Films DVD rental, a smaller site offering 12,500 titles. This brings the UK total of active sites to 34, though excluding the many Lovefilm "powered by" sites, that leaves 18 independent dvd rental companies. We make these points as some other, less-updated guides out there claim to cover more sites, but several of those have gone out of business.

We've also noted Lovefilm increased the tariff on the most popular 3-disc subscriptions from 14.99 to 15.99; we've knocked a half a value star off their rating as a result, bringing them neck-and-neck with Blockbuster for the top spot. Likewise, we've updated Blockbuster's film inventory to 50,000; they stock every film released in the UK and include "extras" discs as a free rental, so this number is essentially equivalent to Lovefilm's 65,000, which includes extras discs as separate rentals.

We've also done a major scrub of the site and particularly the forum, to get rid of tons of spam postings. We've had to switch to manual approval of new forum posters to deter spam, and hope this will keep the place relatively free of it in future.

11 November 06: Our monthly update adds a relatively new DVD rental company, 99pDVD, a pay-per-rent company created by owners of the now-defunct DVDtoMe site. The big news in the industry, about a month ago now, is the Lovefilm merger, creating a massive company account for over half of UK online rentals. We have noted some hiccups in the transition to absorb Screenselect customers, as one would expect, but hopefully these will be short-lived.

As the weather turns colder, we're into peak DVD rental season, and expect online rental to continue to thrive and expand. We're committed to charting the course of the industry, so the customer can make the best and most informed choice.

7 October 06: Monthly update is a bit late this time, but there have been major changes. Screenselect has finally merged under the Lovefilm banner, so we've taken all reference to it off the site and replaced it with Lovefilm. This combined company now dominates the UK dvd rental industry, and it will be interesting to see how it fares, especially as this was less a takeover by Lovefilm than a merger, with much of the Screenselect staff taking leading positions in the new, combined company. There is a new, Christian-based rental company, Visioneers, which we've reviewed. And Armchair DVD Rental--which was at the bottom of our tables--has joined the ranks of defunct independent rentals. We now have quite a predictive track record of our lowest-ranked sites going out of business.

1 September 06: No updates this month--just finished moving house and we're on holiday most of the month; major updates for October, as we enter the main fall-winter DVD rental season...

1 August 06: We conducted a major review of the industry for August, and found no less than seven DVD rental sites had closed down recently: DVD Choices, Boxchoice, DVD Options, Global e-Rental, DVDs4US, DVDtoMe, and Another DVD, bringing the total active sites from 41 to 34 (many of these are "powered by" sites from Screenselect and Lovefilm, which have yet to complete their merger, so the total independent DVD rental companies is actually 17). We note that five of the sites shut down were ranked in our bottom six on the tables, so at least we were on target there.

The closure of so many independent companies which have been around the last couple years suggests the UK DVD rental industry has matured considerably, and we expect some consolidation to continue in the months ahead. There is less room for new entrants into this now firmly-established, but still rapid-growing niche; MyMovieStream, launched last summer, was probably last through the window to make it big. Although the merged Lovefilm/Screenselect will continue to be the clear frontrunner, there will still be vibrant competition from Blockbuster and Amazon, as well as the best of the medium-sized companies, MyMovieStream, Moviemine, and Cinema Paradiso.

We also moved Indian-specialist Cine Bazaar up due to its slick, new site design, moved adult specialists DVD Monthly up as they continue to expand and get good reviews, and moved Movieconnect up slightly after a good personal trial, though we remain concerned about negative customer comments.

We also took the opportunity of this major site update to complete our first press release, Expanding DVD Rental-b-Post Industry Profiled.

We'll be watching closely in the months ahead as the DVD rental season heats up once temperatures begin to drop, vacations end, and children head back to school.

1 July 06: No ranking changes for July; again, the industry is well into its summer lull, with few changes to service we can discern. We also haven't heard anything new on the merger announced in April between Screenselect and Lovefilm, as the two companies continue to offer separate services.

1 June 06: Again we have no ranking changes or major additions for June. We've noticed that between the very warm weather and the World Cup, interest in DVD rental has definitely entered its seasonal ebb (when canceling a recent Screenselect subscription, we noticed one option for why was "Canceling DVD rentals for the summer"). It probably won't revive until September-October, if our visit tracking experience from last year is any measure. Nonetheless, we'll keep monitoring the industry, as there are still many viewers interested in signing up for DVD rental-by-post sites, and we'd like to help make their decisions easier.

1 May 06: For a change, we made no ranking changes in May. Some of the things we've added include coverage of the MyMovieStream site upgrade, the new Netherlands-based hardcore adult site DVD Monthly which mails to the UK, and two new Lovefilm powered-by sites, Tiscali and OdeonDirect.

1 April 06: We have several ranking changes for April, most importantly moving MyMovieStream up to the number four spot above Amazon; this growing company continues to impress as it has gradually run up our table since last summer. Frankly we think it remains better value for money than the larger and better known Amazon, especially with their recent price promotion, offering some of the cheapest prices in the UK.

We added coverage of a couple new UK DVD rental websites, bringing the total back up to 38; Pearl & Dean and ChoicesUK, powered by Lovefilm. We've moved down Sainsburys as our top Lovefilm "powered by site" given continuing bad service comments and replaced them with WH Smith, whose prices may be 2p more expensive, but also boast a full 30-day free trial. We also bumped up DVD Choice slightly, as it is a pretty good, small Northern Ireland service, even if it wouldn't be a top mainland UK choice. Finally we dropped the design rating slightly for ViewDVD, which hasn't been improved in the past year and remains primitive compared to the better companies.

We've also unveiled our DVD Rental Blog, which we started a couple weeks ago but are just making public now. Here we’ll post independent comments every week (every weekend, or more as needed) on the latest industry news, rumours, and special offers concerning UK online DVD and games rental. By subscribing to the blog feed, you can get this information delivered to your inbox weekly, a must for those rental fanatics out there, the value-conscious who want to know about the latest special offers, as well as a useful source for those actually working in the rental industry.

Also see our newly resurrected Forum for discussion of UK DVD and rental issues--we apologize for it being down for so long, but it's back to stay. Finally, we unveil our DVD Player Buyer Guide, a short, simple look at our top ten DVD player picks.

In fact, April 1st marks the end of a four month site redesign from the bottom up, as we now turn to spreading word across the internet and media about our site--please do use word of mouth to spread news of our site if you've found it useful.

Happy renting!

5 March 06: Our site was cited in Motley Fool a couple days ago for our ability to find the best DVD rental deals. We also notice that Pearl & Dean have just launched a new DVD rental service powered by Lovefilm; we'll review it in April, which will bring the UK sites up to 37. Also Amazon, who have never had a free trial before, have just launched limited time special offer, the first month free on their limited, 3-disc package--which is to say, three free rentals.

1 March 06: We have some major changes in our monthly re-ranking. We shifted Blockbuster to the second place spot above Lovefilm, based mainly on recent improvements to their site and what we reckon is the best inventory of new releases of any DVD company. We still believe Lovefilm is excellent and have not reduced their ratings, especially with their recent trailer and game rental innovations, but in comparison Blockbuster have a few customer service problems, Lovefilm appear to have more. Screenselect remains on top, with an excellent system and excellent customer service to match.

We also moved MyMovieStream up again, particularly given their recent site innovations like trailers and also due to their subscription promotion, offering some of the cheapest rates available; 13.49 for a three-disc package is the lowest in the UK at present. We believe they're now the fastest growing and best medium sized DVD company. We've moved Moviemine down slightly, as we just don't think they're as innovative or expansive at the moment, and they don't disclose their title inventory, making this difficult to track.

20 February 06: We've unveiled our latest site design, making the homepage a wide table and putting the table definitions down below instead of in a sidebar. We also now list only the top ten sites on the front page, with a further link to expand the table to all the companies. Why?, because it was taking too long to load the page, especially on a modem, and this measure plus some graphics optimization cut the load time by two-thirds.

We also took the opportunity to drop two defunct DVD rental sites: Club Extra and Speedy DVD; the former a Lovefilm clone, the latter the most expensive per disc site in the UK; they won't be missed. This brings the UK total from 38 to 36 DVD rental sites.

1 February 06: We've again raised Blockbuster a notch to number three, after a couple trial head-to-head subscriptions revealed just how good they are at getting new releases out and increasing their turnaround. We also raised Sofa Cinema a notch.

It's our one year anniversary, and we celebrate by finished the latest round of improvements to the site, though most are behind-the-scenes streamlining/optimizations transparent to visitors. With our new Site Map, we see we're up to 76 web pages, and also added a special Link to Us page; much of our traffic comes from word of mouth from our visitors, so we're very grateful to those who have their own websites and link to us.

1 January 06: We made a few incremental changes this month, again raising Blockbuster; we believe we've underestimated them in the past, and may raise them again in future if they continue to impress. We've also raised easyCinema slightly; though we don't think their pay-per-rent system is good value for higher volume renters, people who only want a few rentals appear to be very happy with the service. Meanwhile, we've lowered Cinema Paradiso, which remains a good medium-size company but doesn't appear to be moving forward like the other leading companies. We've also lowered Movieconnect following a continuing string of complaints over their poor customer service. We also hear there are going to be some major improvements at MyMovieStream soon, so watch this space...