I love film but not LoveFilm.com

I decided to sign up to LoveFilm today on a 14 day free trial.

The signup process

Terrible, in a word.  Locating the pricing for LoveFilm is a near on impossible task unless you “sign up”.  It’s just ridiculous that a site would deliberately hide this information and make you go through a sign up process before telling you the cost. I decided to carry on because I wanted to see what the on-line streaming was like.

LoveFilm film & television selection

First up, I don’t want nor care about the “postal” part of LoveFilm.  I couldn’t care less about it and the hassle of receiving, sending and managing it  is so 1997 that it’s almost an insult that they demand you select this is a default option. I want on-line, streamed and unlimited content.

I’ve got no doubt it’ll get better with time but the truth is that the “free streaming” online section is inadequate.  Films are old and for the most part have been on TV many times before.  Television seems to be relatively old UK series with the likes of “The West Wing” (which for the early seasons dates back to 1999) not available for streaming.  I do feel sorry for them in some ways as they are bound by the pretty awful TV/Film bodies which make it terribly difficult to make all this stuff happen.  Still, for £9.99 a month I’m going to be looking for something which I feel provides value for money, which this doesn’t.  Of course, you can point out that fairly new movies are available on a rental basis via the streaming service but this ISN’T what my £9.99 is paying for.

Media Player options

Now, I’d almost forgive the lack of selection above and might even maintain my subscription but the on-line player system is the straw that broke the camels back.

a) The flash player embedded into LoveFilm has a lot of problems:

1. There is no “pop-out” option for the player

2. You can’t watch full screen on one monitor and work in the other

3. The default embedded player is so small you couldn’t watch it like that

b) Where are the Windows/Mac desktop programs?

Seriously?  How hard would it be to create a Windows desktop client which could have a vastly improved search system and better media player.  It’d be so easy and a big win for them.

c) Where are the Media Center plugins?

I’d take a guess that a reasonable number of subscribers to an on-line system like this are fairly tech savy and perhaps have some fairly good home cinema setups.  Maybe an XBOX360 MCE or the wonderful Windows 7 Media Center which I run.  They might even run Apple’s media center or a Linux Myth type system.  As far as I could see there isn’t one authorised plugin for any of these devices.

Thanks LoveFilm, it was an interesting hour and now I’ll go an unsubscribe.

** Update -  I am so angry that during my “free 2 week trial” i have to CALL THEM to cancel my account. That makes me so unbelievably angry I’m lost for words.  Furious!