Your Public Library's DVD Collection Rivals Netflix, Blockbuster

Renting DVDs from your Public Library - With their cash flow down and bills up, many American families are having a hard time making ends meet each month. One place to make a quick savings is to either pare down or eliminate video expenses such as Netflix, premium movie channels, the corner video store rentals, or even cable TV altogether. How will you survive? Just take a trip down to your local public library and check out the DVD offerings. Month after month over the last several years, libraries have been building their DVD collections. Now, in addition to wonderful educational offerings, they have top movies and TV show collections available for the library borrower.

And the list can be quite extensive. A quick search of the Orange County, California library system returned 18,698 DVDs in its collection.

My wife and I have made it a weekly routine to head down to the main branch of the local library and ply the DVD shelves. This week we've been watching old episodes of "Alfred Hitchcock Presents." It's a wonderful old TV show that features clever mystery stories with surprise endings. Another benefit of the old TV episodes is that often you will see performances from actors who found later fame and fortune. One 1955 Hitchcock episode featured a very young and talented Cloris Leachman.

My family loves old TV shows, but maybe yours doesn't. Not to worry. Many libraries publish monthly lists of the new DVDs they have added to their collections and you may be surprised by what they are buying.

To prove my point that public library DVD collections are not just old Jacques Cousteau shows or DIY bee keeping videos, check out this list of recent additions to the Davenport, Iowa public library DVD collection:

• Curious Case of Benjamin Button
• Last Chance Harvey
• Mall Cop
• Wendy and Lucy
• Valkyrie
• Confessions of a Shopaholic
• Defiance
• Gran Torino
• New in Town
• Revolutionary Road
• Knowing
• Push

I suspect you would find many of these on Netflix' list of most popular recent releases.

Another great feature of using the library is that you can do an online search to find your DVDs, and after you find the DVDs you want, many libraries will let you put them on hold and even send them to your library branch of choice for pick up.

But can you really save any money doing this? Absolutely.

The Netflix three DVD plan costs $16.99 per month. This works out to $203.88 per year. The public library costs nothing. With the library you realize a savings of...give me a moment to do the math...$203.88 per year.

The typical add on charge for HBO or other premium channels runs about $15.00 per month. Subscribe for a year and you are out $180. Going the public library route puts that money back into your pocket.

The truly frugal might consider dropping their cable or satellite TV subscription altogether saving possibly $1,000 or more per year.

One more added benefit of the public library: you might find a great book to read! That will never happen watching cable TV.

Source:
http://www.davenportlibrary.com/Default.aspx?PageId=217&nt=218