About 8 weeks ago I was asked to review Blinkbox, for those of you that don’t know Blinkbox is a service which allows you to watch movies online without subscription. Now for me that’s pretty awesome, there might not be a film I want to watch every month and so paying at least £5 or £6 a month is just pointless. Movies are usually £3.49 to rent and you can buy movies from £6.99
I already had an account set up on the website because I had bought 8 Mile for my sister previously. Setting up an account is quick and easy to do, you enter your name, email address and create a password, you can then choose to add your address and payment details so that you can deposit £1 and claim your £5 free credit, you have then set up and account and can edit your profile. When I set up my account I claimed the £5 free credit to spend, which meant 8 Mile only cost me £1.99, which is a bargain! The great thing about buying the films on Blinkbox is that you can login anywhere and watch them, saves having to lug your laptop or dvds round to a friends house.
The first movie I rented was Pitch Perfect, I’d never got round to seeing it at the cinema. but it is right up my street. Myself and my sister decided we would have a movie afternoon and chose to watch it on my laptop. I did find that I needed to watch it on internet explorer rather than Chrome, but i’m often having to switch internet browser so i’m thinking I need to update Chrome. It was very easy to choose the film we wanted to watch, and once the movie had loaded we didn’t need to sit through any buffering, which is fantastic! I always find it very annoying when the movie is constantly having to stop and buffer.
The second film I watched was The Hobbit. We choose to watch The Hobbit because it’s a film that the family can enjoy together, and we connected it up to the TV to watch. I assume it was easy enough to get my laptop connected to the TV, my stepdad set it all up, and it didn’t take long before our film watching was underway!
Our set up for The Hobbit
The third film I watched was Les Miserables, myself and my friend decided we would have a girlie night in and watch Les Mis because it’s a film we both really enjoyed at the cinema. However we did have an issue with buffering, the first time it had happened, and we assumed it may be because we were upstairs rather than in the living room where the internet box is, and the room where I’d watched my last two films. I tweeted about this issue, and I got a quick response from the Blinkbox twitter account telling me to report it to their support team.
I reported the issue on their website, and just over an hour later I had an email response from them. They gave me some tips on how to hopefully avoid the issue in future, and they also credited my account with £3.49 so that I could rent another film.
I have yet to choose which film i’m going to rent next but I’m thinking I might actually look at renting a TV series.
I have found Blinkbox to be a really easy website to use, and the customer service team are fantastic, it doesn’t take long to get a response if you do have an issue. I will continue to use Blinkbox for both watching and purchasing films.
One thing to make note of is that rentals are valid for 30 days but once you start watching you only have 48 hours in which to watch your rental.
I’m going to get looking for my next rental, and I definitely recommend Blinkbox when you’re looking for your next movie or TV series to watch online.