A while back I blogged about how much I like Netflix. Since then, I’ve discovered what most people already know: they engage in a practice called “throttling” (by subscribers) or “smoothing” (by Netflix), whereby Netflix prevents you from getting more movies per month than they think is reasonable. Though the subscription is for unlimited rentals per month, if you turn movies around very quickly, they will withhold your next DVD or send it from a distant center so that you never get quite as many movies as you thought you would.

I was pretty annoyed when I figured/found this out, so I thought I’d switch to Blockbuster, but it turns out they aren’t much better. (And I know they now let you return movies in person and get a free one, but that defeats the purpose of DVDs-by-mail.) So what I’ve done is kept both subscriptions, with Netflix reduced to 2-at-a-time and Blockbuster 3-at-a-time. I’ll have up to 5 movies out at a time, but each company individually will be unlikely to throttle me because I won’t usually be returning movies the day after I receive them. I just started this new arrangement, but I think it will work.