Personal touch key for DVD rentals

A Kalgoorlie-Boulder DVD rental business says the video shop will always have its place in the market, despite the arrival of Netflix and on-demand services in Australia.

The US movie subscription giant announced last year it would launch in March, with rates likely to be about $10 to $15 a month for unlimited movie streaming.

While admitting he was biased, Civic Video owner Jonas McLellan said his business would always be viable because downloading movies was a “lonely existence”.

“My personal belief is people enjoy going to the store with their family and picking out the movie and the chocolates,” he said.

“People are able to ask what movie is good.

“It will be challenging, Netflix will definitely affect us, although it won’t provide old movies and TV shows, but it will definitely affect the way we watch movies.”

For the time being however, it would be business as usual for the Kalgoorlie-born man who set up shop 15 years ago.

Over that decade and a half, the business has survived the DVD revolution so Mr McLellan remains positive about the future, although admitting his business’ boom period had passed.

“It is still paying the bills, but who knows what is going to happen, and we are diversifying into other things,” he said.

“Like it is with any business, it’s a case of going with the trends and seeing what happens.

“We are still getting in new members, so it hasn’t slowed down yet,” he said, noting the closure of the Civic store at Hannans Boulevard late last year.

Slow internet access might limit Goldfields residents from getting the most out of Netflix, with only Greenwood Estate hooked up to the NBN.

It is not expected to be rolled out to other Goldfields suburbs until 2017.

Australia is ranked 44 for average connection speed, behind the likes of New Zealand, Singapore and South Korea at number one, according to a report by Akamai.