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Consumers have never before been blessed with so many options in home entertainment. Movies can be selected through video stores, Pay Per View on cable and satellite providers, and companies such as Netflix and Blockbuster Total Access now make movies available online and by mail.

When I first heard about Netflix, the concept seemed odd to me. Why would I wait around for a movie to be mailed to me, when I could just drive to the video store and get one right there? For that matter, with my satellite and DVR, I can purchase movies on Pay Per View, record them on my DVR, and have them for keeps or until I get sick of them. However, after a couple months of dismal Pay Per View choices followed by several late fees at my local video store, I finally gave Netflix a try.

Signing up for Netflix was easy. There are a number of different plans available, depending on how much you want to spend and how many movies you can go through in a month. For $4.99 per month, you can get one movie at a time. For $47.99 per month, you can get up to eight movies at a time, with unlimited watch instantly time. I chose the plan that allows my family three movies at a time for $16.99 per month. On this plan we've been able to watch about ten movies per month, and have used about five hours a month using the "watch instantly" option. If I had made the same number of rentals at my local video store, I would have spent around $40. Tack on the inevitable late fees my family can never seem to avoid, and that amount would have doubled.

After selecting a plan, the next step is to select your list of movies, called your queue. Netflix mails the first movies in your queue. Once you return a movie or several of them, they send the next ones from your queue. You can change the order of the movies on your queue at any time. The selection of movies available is absolutely phenomenal. I have yet to think of a movie, whether older or new release, that I have not found on Netflix.

I especially love that there are so many TV series available on DVD or on their "watch instantly" option. There are so many great TV series that I wish I had caught from the beginning. With Netflix, you can get catch missed episodes during the re-run doldrums of summer. If you have a high speed connection, you can watch as many TV episodes in a row as you want. I found that the picture quality was not as good on the "watch instantly" option as when I had the DVD, but the convenience of it was hard to beat.

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