Before I get started on this blog my video camera died after not being used for a while. Sadly it means this unboxing will be done with words & photos only and not have any video as initially planned. I'll have a new camera in time for the next package.
Subscription boxes seem to be quite the thing these days don't they? I love movies (I think that's kind of obvious because of this blog and what I do) and recently when Awesome Cupcake and some of the Teacups looked into subscription boxes I wondered if there were any movie subscription boxes. It took a while because it seems a lot of them start and then do not stay active for very long. I did find one though that looks really good and has a lot of options. Let's have a look at DVD Locker.
Founded in 2016 and based in the UK they ship internationally and you get a great choice of boxes for all pockets. Ranging from 1 to 4 movies, you can choose between DVD/Blu-Ray format and they ship out monthly.
When you sign up you get asked quite a comprehensive set of questions about what you like and dislike about movies, what makes a good movie and the worst question for me....what is your favourite genre. You also get asked what movies you own too (interesting one for me, I pasted my CLZ database over!) and you then are also given space to leave comments if you want them to know anything specific (I, for example, said I have no issue being sent overseas versions of a movie as I play my movies through my laptop, so I have a region free setup).
The next morning I received an email saying they had selected what DVDs they had chosen for me, so I logged back into the website to see what I had been offered. They had chosen District 9 and Contagion.....I'm not exactly a fan of District 9, so I selected to swap that movie and waited to see what they wanted to give me next. Yes, if there is a movie they plan to send you that is not your thing, you already own, or for some other reason do not want them to send to you, you can select that you want to swap it and then that will taken off the list of selections for you and you will never be given that as a choice again. It was simple to request a swap (which are unlimited, you can ask this as many times as you wish) and within 24 hours there was a new choice in the choice of Patient Zero, a movie I've yet to see so I accepted.
A few days later I'm told my selections are getting ready to be posted and I had 24 hours to review the selection before they were shipped. I'd already known what movies were heading my way so I just left that message and the next day (a Sunday) I was told my package was dispatched and would be with me in a few days.
To my surprise....on TUESDAY a package arrived... albeit a tad battered (The guys on DVD Locker social media noticed this right away as soon as I posted the image of the package.)
And....every month you can get POPCORN! You can choose either sweet or salty....or of course, you could just go without. Me, I chose sweet popcorn, and now I'm ready for a movie night! Awesome Cupcake is intrigued by Patient Zero and really likes Contagion too so it looks like I'm sharing the Popcorn!
So looking at the first parcel, it was protected well (the discs were all intact, no damaged cases, etc), the discs are great quality and delivered rather speedily. DVD Locker also has a good social media presence so as soon as I put up pictures of the parcel on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, they answered right away which was pretty good how they reacted. Great service from the company all round really.
I've been lucky enough to talk to Scott, the head of marketing, sales and service who about this subscription service.
Hi Scott, thanks for taking the time to answer a few questions regarding DVD Locker. So when was DVD Locker established and what were the thoughts behind making the subscription service?
We were established back in 2016. Me and the owners are very close indeed and both have a love for movies and always have! We wanted to give something to people who can look back, treasure and stock up on great movies!
Pretty cool! So where do you get your discs from and how do you test them?
We source our movies (both DVD and Blu-ray) direct from the manufacturer, producing studios and film companies. On average we have around 570 hours of films delivered per week and we've developed our in-house system called Dstockv we have a great team of programmers, software and web development we build everything within DVDLocker from within and from scratch. We run each movie through the sequences to ensure no errors are found, disk speed stays in rhythm (no jumping etc) and we look at the specific frame rates for that particular region we are posting to, if we have even as low as 1 error we have a team who will physically play the movie from start-end checking any issues as they watch, if we identify a bad copy we will dispose of this immediately and recycle to save on landfill.
That's pretty thorough and it's nice to see the business to that is doing its best to be environmentally sound. So, how many people subscribe?
Currently, we have 350 active subscribers.
What has been the most obscure movie that you've sent out to a subscriber so far?
The most obscure movie we sent out was actually as part of a test/pilot scheme which we trialled and this was ‘Touki Bouki’ which was released back in 1973.
That's pretty obscure, I've not heard of that one...I look forward to seeing some real oddities as well as some classics in my subscription! And speaking of looking forward to the future, what plans do you have?
Our future plans are to continue what we are doing, however make it better as we go along, we are looking at bringing in 4K packages and also a TV Boxset package where the customer would receive another season/series of the same boxset every month (this is very much a work in progress) and with our current warehouses housing over 96,000 individual movie titles we need to do a little bit of shuffling around!
They sound like great steps in the future, especially the 4K packages!
Thanks for taking the time to chat Scott!
So, if you want to get Blu-Rays or DVDs every month (and popcorn!) you really need to check out DVD Locker. It's a great deal and a brilliant way to build up a movie collection and you only get movies that YOU want!
So, get yourselves over to https://www.DVDLocker.co.uk and check them out, it's definitely worth it!
And expect to see a DVD Locker unboxing every month here on Zenless Popcorn!