Why is it better to rent movies online than to buy them? In today's age of cheap supermarket DVD prices is better to purchase your movies or are online movie rentals the better deal?

1. Once you have purchased a movie and then watched it, what do you do with it? Retain it in your 'video library' for future viewing? But will you? By the time most people watch videos twice it has already been screened on TV and you could then record it free of charge: so what additional benefit is there after you have watched the movie? Renting enables you to view a movie at low price as soon as it is available on DVD or Blu-ray and then change it for another - something you cannot do if you purchase the movie.

2. You can rent three movies at any one time for the price of purchasing just one, and you can change your rented movies as often per month as you wish. You can theoretically watch 30 or more movies a month for the same price as purchasing one. Not that you would want to watch one movie a day - or would you? If you are housebound 24/7 then perhaps you would welcome this opportunity. It is something to think about.

These, then, are the two main reasons for people renting rather than purchasing videos, although they are not the only ones. Among these is the large choice of movies you have with an online video rental site, and generally a lot more than you would expect to find in any offline video rental store. An additional, and very important benefit, is that you would be enabled to make advanced bookings of videos of any newly released movies. You would then be offered these movies to rent in accordance with your place in the queue.

Another benefit is connected with the great classic movies, such as 'The African Queen' and many of the Charlie Chaplin movies, that is one of the main reason for some movie buffs joining online movie rental sites. It is frequently very difficult to find these older movies online, even to purchase, and so this is a great benfit for you.

Other benefits such as being able to search for any movie you want by means of title, actor or genre, and having free self-addressed envelopes back for your video returns are added bonuses, but all in all, there appears to be few arguments against renting or in favor of purchasing DVDs. You can rent Blu-ray videos as well as the standard (for now) DVDs, so if you want to rent your videos on the internet then you are certainly making the correct choice.