Canadian Gift Guide

In case you haven’t heard the supposedly big and fantastic news, Netflix is coming to Canada soon-ish. In case you don’t know what Netflix is, in the US of A, it’s a DVD service that has bankrupted the likes of Blockbuster. You basically sign up, make a list of movies you want to rent, and they send them to your door with a postage paid return envelope. The only edge a place like Blockbuster has over Netflix is the fact it’s not as on demand as walking into a store, picking what you want, and leaving. Now, back to my original statement – Netflix is not *truly* coming to Canada this fall. Their digital service is, which allows you to order from a *much more limited* range of films through a digital terminal – whether your cable box, television, or video game system.

Enough about Netflix though, did you know Canada has actually had a Netflix equivalent for several years? Although there are a few options out there for who your home DVD delivery service could be, Zip.ca is definitely the biggest one out there, with Roger’s recently taking out a contract with them to run an identical service for their customers.

Zip has four different rental plans available, starting at $10.95 per month which allows you to have one DVD out at a time, with unlimited DVD rentals per month. The prices go up from there to $49.95 per month for eight DVDs out at a time, with up to 22 DVDs out per month. Obviously this is a fantastic, logical gift for the movie buff in your life, but also consider it as an alternative to shelling out for season upon season of TV on DVD. Yep, you can order shows disc by disc and get caught up on old classics and new favourites (just remember to only have one disc on your ‘Ziplist’ at a time so you don’t get disc 3 before disc 1!).

To be fair, if you look out on the vast internet, there are some complaints about Zip and what they need to iron out. But I would also mention that if you have nothing to complain about, you probably wouldn’t write about Zip anyway. In terms of how easy it is to gift, Zip actually has a special page meant especially for gifting subscriptions, starting at one month (for the friend that is flying solo without their spouse for a month…) to a full year (for a movie-happy maven). You get to theme their gift card, choose the type of plan, and presto, you’re done!