Just last week I was complaining that Norway, being a small country, doesn’t have a Netflix, and it turns out that it does: F24 uses exactly the same model as Netflix and has even been mentioned on blogs I read. I suppose I wasn’t paying attention. So anyway, if you’re a Netflix or F24 customer, you pay a monthly subscription fee, list the DVDs you want to see on the website, and receive them in the mail. When you mail ’em back (prepaid envelopes are included in the subscription) they send you new ones.

Strangely, F24 appear to have started this operation with virtually no eye to marketing or community building. The only links to the site, which has been running since last April, are from Jorunn‘s and Thomas‘s blogs, and there’s an ad for them at DVD-arkivet. They haven’t even submitted their site to Kvasir’s catalogue. Their site has an area where you can submit and vote for videos you think they should get, but there’s nowhere for discussions, reviews, comments. I’d feel more secure in paying money if I knew there was an active group of people using the service. As the site is now, there might be ten unhappy users and it’s about to go broke tomorrow, taking my subscription money with it. There are a few posts about F24 in no.kultur.film – in June they were reported to be fairly slow at sending out new films, in October a user reported being entirely satisfied. Commentors to Jorunn’s sceptical post have mostly been less than satisfied.

I signed up anyway. The selection is at least as good as that at my local video store and not having to go out into the cold dark rain snow sleet to get – or return – a video is too good to miss. They have a rudimentary recommendation system. And oh, no more late fees!

Oh, hey – if you sign up, use this link, and I earn points towards two months free subscription 🙂