3D Bluray Rental

While researching replacements for the now-shuttered DVD-by-mail wing of Netflix I came across a small outfit: 3D Bluray Rental. It dates back to 2011, clearly hoping to ride the hype of 3D cinema/home video that never really happened.

The site’s design and UX is quite quirky (to be charitable)—it has a real DIY vibe. But the catalog is decent,¹ they carry 4K discs, and shipping is included. You can rent a la carte or do a monthly subscription, and things get shipped in a plain white envelope that is designed like Netflix’s—same tearaway flap/adhesive strip turning it into a return envelope, only without the iconic red color. There is no queue in the same sense as Netflix’s—instead there’s a Wish List to keep track of titles you want to rent, but you have to manually add them to a cart and check out. So far I’ve done one test rental and it went pretty smoothly, so I will probably use them for the many things I can’t find on streaming.

I had previously posted about Scarecrow Video’s rent by mail service but that one is structured a bit differently, with a $12 flat fee for shipping up to six disks. I’ve yet to try it but I think Scarecrow’s model seems more like a bulk order scenario, as opposed to 3DBR’s more a la carte model. I think I’ll try out Scarecrow with an eye towards rarer/back-catalog things that I’ll batch into one order.