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Bigflicks is a rapidly expanding service, already going much further from its original DVD rental store roots. Well financed by the Reliance-Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group, Bigflicks offers DVD rental as well as digital downloads currently serving the Indian diaspora overseas. They operate through their website, call centre, distribution centre, or SMS to order.
BigFlicks has kickstarted operations in Pune, Chandigarh and Hyderabad, and hopes to soon follow with a debut in Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, Chennai, Cochin and Ahmedabad.
They claim to have the most titles of any Indian company--over 15,000 titles--which is on par with what Seventymm claims. Bigflicks also has extras like reward points that can be redeemed for various offers. The website is quite well done and set up for easy browsing, with a full 15 genres to choose from, as well as categories like award winners, kids, top rated, TV series, etc. They even have a handful of PC and VCD games. You can search on title, actor, director, censor, and even year--quite a powerful search engine.
The actual information per title is quite good too, listing cast, language, director, music director, producer, (rare categories, and all hyperlinked), as well as member rating, synopsis, language, censor certificate, genre, and member reviews. One annoying thing we'd change--the Member Reviews should be directly underneath the synopsis--as it is, for many titles, if you click on reviews, you find nothing there as no one has reviewed it yet, a waste of a click and time, but something easily fixed.
We do have to say when we tested it, we found the website slow, so marked it down on that point, something we hope improves as it mars an otherwise excellent site.
Bigflicks stores are open 11am to 11pm, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. Deliveries take place 1-9PM every day, including holidays, a rarity among DVD rental companies.
In addition to their DVD rental site, they have a broadand download site, where you can download movies (around 1.5 GB) from US $9.99 to $19.99, then watch it whenever you want, for playback on up to four PCs. Downloaded can take 30 minutes or 3 hours depending on the speed of your connection. Downloads are the way of the future, but prices will need to come down and the technology for getting downloads onto the TV screen will need to mature in our opinion, though at least Bigflicks is in the game early.
Prices: Bigflicks offer three unlimited plans; 1 discs out at a time for Rs 250 per month (deposit Rs 400), 2 discs out for Rs399 per month (deposit Rs 750), and 3 discs out for Rs 499 (deposit Rs 1000.
They have significant discounts if you pay quarterly, semiannually, or annually. For instance, if you pay up front for a whole year, you essentially get two months free (1 disc plan at Rs 2500, 2 discs at Rs3999, 3 discs at Rs5000.
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Rental Basics