Are there any rental services like NetFlix that operate in Canada?

i use zip.ca and vhqonline.ca

Do a search here. There is a good thread around somewhere where a DHC'er compares the quantity and availability of movies from a variety of Canadian Online DVD rental sites.

The other concern for deciding which one to sign up for is where you live. Some of these outfits are more Western or Eastern based. Depending where you live in relation to their depot will determine how fast new DVD's arrive. The turn around time on DVDs in the mail affects how many DVDs you get each month.

I also just recently saw that some services (I think Zip) allow you to "tell them" the DVD is in the mail and they will trust you and send a new DVD before the old one arrives back in their depot.

There a quite a few Canadian rental sites although it seems that Zip may be the largest. I have not used any of these yet. But Zip keeps popping up.. for example at Futureshops website and now Rogers online uses Zip.

Those are the two main ones. ZIP is your choice for selection - they have over 30,000 titles and will add just about anything they don't have (I've been a happy customer almost since they started). ZIP is also the actual fulfillment behind the new Rogers mail-rental service. If you rent a lot of new releases some people have indicated that VHQ has very good results on this, and they are a quality operation in general.

You might want to wander over to the forums at www.onlinedvdrentalguide.ca (http://www.onlinedvdrentalguide.ca) - there are a lot of renters there and can answer any questions you might have.

I've been using Zip.ca for about 6 months now. It's the largest (or was) in Canada although it's partly on paper. If they don't own a movie you request, they basically order it so uncommon titles may take a while. I pay for this instead of cable and get more I want to watch. It works quite well and only had 2 problems with discs.

Distance is certainly something to consider if you're trying to maximize the titles per month. However, after the honeymoon was over, I found I wasn't rushing too much. If you balance choices with series (like tv seasons) and movies you'll always have something to watch.

Too bad Netflix decided not to expand to Canada. I would choose Netflix if that was an option. I tried Zip.ca and was disappointed.

I've been using Zip.ca for about 6 months now. It's the largest (or was) in Canada although it's partly on paper. If they don't own a movie you request, they basically order it so uncommon titles may take a while.
Are you sure this was ZIP and not MoviesForMe? M4M does do something like this - they advertise 20,000 titles, but don't actually have all those. To the best of my knowledge, ZIP has actual stock of anything that is showing a green availability bar. ZIP will add anything they haven't already got in their database, and some of the weirder titles or those from smaller suppliers do take some time to arrive - was this what you meant?

I get periodic updates from ZIP for the numbers on the chart on my website, and at last count they had just crossed 30,000 titles in stock - excluding things on order, not available, or not yet on DVD. They have 160,000+ discs (the disc inventory number is on the sleeve stickers, and you can see they have gone through 200,000+ since they started).

I just wanted to mention this because there are some companies out there with bogus inventory claims (Canflix, Starflix).

ZIP will add anything they haven't already got in their database, and some of the weirder titles or those from smaller suppliers do take some time to arrive - was this what you meant?

Yes, sorry if I didn't come out right. I like to watch a lot of foreign movies and yes about 75% of them zip.ca has in stock, they do need to order in the others. But, at least they're in their database and don't require hassling to have them added.

I'm doing my part to increase zip.ca's inventory ;)

Yes, sorry if I didn't come out right. I like to watch a lot of foreign movies and yes about 75% of them zip.ca has in stock, they do need to order in the others. But, at least they're in their database and don't require hassling to have them added.

I'm doing my part to increase zip.ca's inventory ;)
Some titles do take a while to come in (especially if Amazon.ca marks them as "IMPORT"), but sometimes an order falls through the cracks, or they don't hear back on an order and it doesn't seem to trigger a ZIP followup. Some items may also have gone out of print or otherwise be unavailable, but ZIP is sometimes slow in switching these to display the "Searching" binoculars icon instead. It never hurts to have customer service check on something that shows as "On Order" for weeks.

ZIP does go to a fair bit of trouble to get titles - I've had a couple of cases where they've found copies of out of print movies (presumably from eBay or other secondary sources).