DVD Price Search - Find the Best Prices on your Blu-Ray, HD-DVDs and DVDs
Written: Jan 12 '04 (Updated Feb 14 '07)
|
| Full Review |
DVD Price Search is the site I have to go to everyday. I have a very large collection of DVDs, and the fault lies mainly with this super website.
This is surely the end-all-be-all of all comparison shopping web sites available.
"The Idea of" and the "How To"
This concept may not be new, but it is most effective, and it could not be made simpler to utilize.
Just remember that this site is not a store, it is a place to compare prices on DVD titles. If you adding DVDs to your cart, don't worry, you do not have to purchase any from DVD Price Search, the fact is, you couldn't if you wanted to.
You type in the search area of the DVD titles you are looking to purchase and add them to your cart.
If you are looking for future titles, you can choose the Upcoming Releases tab and search the titles that are listed alphabetically in date order.
After you add them to your cart and you are finished looking, you click on the Compare Prices tab, which looks like a graph.
This will bring you to a chart telling you what stores have it, and the prices they sell it for.
Under the title for the DVD, in the far left column, it will name the store that sells it for the least.
Once you have decided where you're shopping, you just click on the price in that stores column and it will bring you to that site, with the DVD info showing.
All you do then, when you are at the DVD store, is add to the store's cart, register your info if you haven't done so already, and then purchase.
Do you have to purchase what is in your DVD Price Search cart? No. You could leave those DVDs in there, and wait for a coupon or just for the prices to go down another day. As long as you do not delete your cookies for this site on your computer, these DVDs will stay in your DVD Price Search cart after you click on the Save Cart tab.
Right now, I have about 13 DVDs in my cart waiting for the currency exchange rate for the Canadian dollar to fall so I could get the best deal.
Other Money Saving Tricks and Tips
If you have more than one DVD title in your cart and less that 12, you could check the box next to Include Best Combination and then click the tab that reads Update Price Comparison.
This will tell you how to spend the least money total at which stores.
Also, if you are on the front page of this site, you could go to the Specials and Coupons tab and browse the coupon codes for the stores and then add them to your cart.
Now when you compare your DVD prices in your cart, any coupons you've added will now factor into the price.
Some DVD websites offer free shipping. This cost is automatically factored into the total price from any DVD store.
Contents
Currently, DVD Price Search compares prices from 23 stores.
These stores are the best and most reliable stores to order from. Here's the list of stores, and what I learned about them from DVD Price Search:
Amazon-(maybe the biggest selection, competitive prices)
Barnes & Noble - (huge selection, higher prices)
Best Buy - (free shipping, ok sized selection, pick-up)
BestPrices.com - (pretty big selection, great prices)
Buy.com - (huge selection, competitive prices, good coupons)
CD Universe - (Huge selection, great low prices)
Deep Discount DVD - (Free shipping, pretty big selection)
Digital Eyes - (Ok selection, prices slightly higher)
Direct Video - (I never ordered from them, prices higher, smaller selection)
DVD Box Office - (I never ordered from them)
DVD Empire - (One of the biggest selections, low prices)
DVD Planet - (One of the biggest selections, low prices)
DVD Soon - (Huge selection, lowest prices)
ECampus.com - (no idea)
EntertainMe.com - (no idea)
shop.Hitmenow.com - (no idea)
HKFlix.com - (specialize in Japanese titles)
Movies Unlimited - (no idea)
North American DVD - (Canadian, low prices)
Overstock.com - (big selection, low prices)
Playcentric.com - (no idea)
SamGoody.com - (nice selection, price is a toss up)
Walmart.com - (smaller selection, low prices)
There is a tab (that I hardly use), that is very helpful called Browse The Aisles. This is set up just like a physical store where you could browse by genre, or by titles with DTS sound format or Anamorphic 16:9 video. Also in this section you could browse through DVDs that are priced lowest at any of the 23 stores.
You could find some surprisingly great deals that you didn't know were out there.
There is also the tab Vendor Info that allows you to view a very detailed, yet very short sum up of each of the DVD stores. It also has a star rating of all of the stores that are rated (sometimes unfairly) by people like you and me.
There is a lot more in the contents that I don't have to list to make my point about this site. When you visit this site, you'll see what I mean.
The Competition and How They Stack Up
My Simon is a site that will search for the lowest prices on DVDs, VHS tapes, CDs, and books. The site used to be really good, but I suppose support from other stores has diminished. Plus besides having no cart, when looking to compare prices on the DVD Queen: Greatest Video Hits 1, the lowest price found was $19.30 compared to $17.65 on DVD Price Search.
DVD Price Find is a nice looking site. When I searched for the best price of that Queen DVD the lowest price I found was $18.66, which is over a dollar more expensive of the cheapest found at DVD Price Search. It looks as though there are only five stores participating with this site. There is no cart, and it takes a lot more work in general.
AllDVDPrices.com is now a dead site, need I say more?
Pricealert.comis a site where mostly very expensive stores have participated. Plus some of the time, the web page is dead.
DVDSavant.com is a great site, which gives a list of current coupons from DVD stores, It has a condensed list of upcoming titles grouped by future dates, comparison price search, and an Easter Egg list. I put in a search for lowest price on this site for Queen: Greatest Video Hits 1 on DVD Savant and the cheapest price was $18.75. When looking for the lowest price on DVD Price Search, the lowest price found was $17.65.
It's clear that the best prices are found on DVD Price Search. Plus, DVD Savant does not have the cart feature, which really makes it no comparison to the superior DVD Price Search.
PriceGrabber.com is a great site that searches and compares prices on everything. This site did find the same lowest price on Queen: Greatest Video Hits 1 as DVD Price Search has. Yet, DVDs are such a small part of this huge site that it should not even be here. Plus, no cart available, and no coupons lists.
DVD Price Compare has a web page title that is closest to DVD Price Search, yet when I searched for Queen: Greatest Video Hits 1, it turned up no results. Uhh, if you can't even find the DVDs you want, why would you utilize this site?
DVD Price Search is really one of a kind, and it cannot be mimicked successfully. It stands alone as the most innovative and one of a kind comparison shopping available online, DVD-wise or any otherwise.
Recommended:
Yes
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
scapp70
|
 - Top 500 |
|
Member: Michael Scapp
Location: NYC
Reviews written: 483
Trusted by: 255 members
About Me:
STOP Obama on 'NET NEUTRALITY'! Too much power = corruption!
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.