If you’ve been tempted to leave Netflix for Blockbuster’s lower-priced DVD-by-mail rental service, here’s something to give you pause. According to one of David Pogue’s readers, Blockbuster is making like Michael Powell by engaging in censorship:
“I wondered why you didn’t mention one of the biggest differences between the three DVD-by-mail services: censorship. Blockbuster and Wal-Mart refuse to stock and ship movies that are unrated or rated NC-17. ‘Y Tu Mama Tambien,’ for example, is available to their customers only in a sliced-and-diced version. Thank goodness for Netflix, which has the corporate courage to let people make up their own minds about what is appropriate for them to see and hear!”
Worse, readers complain that Blockbuster does not identify the movies that it has edited; you don’t discover the switcheroo until it’s too late.
I’ve hated Blockbuster since it drove my favorite local movie store out of business; this just gives me more reason to stick with Netflix (supplemented, of course, by TLA for those hard-to-find foreign releases).
2 Comments on "Another Reason To Hate Blockbuster"
Mark:
It wouldn’t matter if Blockbuster-by-mail did offer NC-17 movies, it would never be in stock anyway. Their Netflix copycat must stock one copy of each movie for the whole US cause all I ever saw on my queue was “short wait, short wait, short wait…”
Colby:
That may have been the case in April, but as of today blockbuster.com carries both the rated and the unrated versions for rent by their online customers.
I also feel it’s unfair to label carrying only the R-rated version as “censorship” since that version IS an official, studio-released version. It’s not like Blockbuster took the original unrated version and made their own cuts.
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