I have been a Lovefilm customer on and off for about five years. The basic premise of Lovefilm is that you pay a set monthly amount and get a certain amount of DVDs by post. I currently have the package for three DVDs at a time (just upgraded to four, must be the recession) this costs about £16.50 a month.

This means that Lovefilm initially send you three DVDs in the post, once you have watched one post it back in the prepaid envelope and they will send you a new one once they have received it back. The good thing with this is that you can watch as many DVDs as you like without paying any extra. This is also the bad side as if you don't watch any for a week or so there is a nagging feeling that you're not getting value for money. They also offer a download option for older shows, I have only used this once and it was quite 'glitchy' so I haven't used it since.

You also need to have a rental list with Lovefilm which can be updated at any time online, the list is prioritised between high, medium and low priority to reflect which discs you would prefer first. Unfortunately Lovefilm aren't overly keen on sending the new release DVDs out to long term customers, it seems to be a bit like insurance companies saving the best deals for new customers, I understand the reasoning for this but it's still annoying when I'm getting ten year old movies that have been on TV when a newcomer on a free trial is getting the releases from that week.

I have previously used Blockbuster who do a similar deal but at the time this was a maximum two DVDs at once, call me a square eyes if you will but I prefer to have the extra disc for the difference in price. There doesn't seem to many other companies out there doing anything similar to Lovefilm (the ones that do are usually serviced by Lovefilm anyway and just have their own branding).

The timescales are usually quite efficient and do tended to be posted out when they have received them back. The exception to this is Saturday when they either don't despatch but update the list regardless or never get them in the last Saturday post. I have never received a DVD on a Monday that shows as posted on Saturday. The other minor gripe is the llong winded method to declare a disc lost in the post. I appreciate that they will do certain checks to stop people stealing heaps of new release discs but after several years with the company I'm hardly likely to be stealing Jonathan Creek Series 2 disc 2 from about fifteen years ago.

Lovefilm are good but they could be better.