I’m just making predictions. Your cost is 78 cents per trade (two stamps) plus the downsides of advertising, theirs is $1.39. I personally don’t see a large difference, and depending on how those advertising downsides play out, I might like the Peerflix higher price better. With Peerflix I’ve gotten disks one day after asking, which you can’t do. I really think you’re overestimating the credit card fear. Do you have studies suggesting this is major barrier to adoption of netflix or other services?

Of course there are those who like to own movies and those who just want to watch them. I’m mostly in the latter camp, but my volume is low so Peerflix or cinexchange is more economical than netflix.

My point about the complexity of Netflix is not about the movie choice interface, which one can always do a little better. I could set up my computerphobe mother with Netflix if I wanted. One guided session of picking a stack of movies, and after that all she has to know is, “When you are done, stick the movie in the mailer, you don’t have to even turn the comptuer on.” That interface is hard to beat. You could do that on popular movies, if you were willing to let people mail them without confirmation of a buyer.

It would work like this. If a movie is trading briskly, such as a new release, the mailer it comes in could have a card in it saying, “If you would like to trade this movie at market price before , just stick it in the mailer and return it to us. No need to go to the computer.” Peerflix can’t do that, Cinexchange can.

I agree trading and bidding and asking can be fun, as can haggling in a market in Beijing. But eventually you realize, “it’s just a dvd” and you don’t want to spend mental engergy on it. In cinexchange, you will find yourself buying a movie high and selling low sometimes if you don’t put a lot of attention into it. A few obsessive people will make minimum wage buying low and selling high. This in effect will generate a higher cost per trade than 78 cents.

(I’m not a giant fan of the make your own envelope system peerflix has moved to. It’s just another cost to me in terms of extra time.)

I remain convinced a semi-trading system is better, where the person who introduces a dvd into the system eventually has to take it back if nobody else wants to keep it. This encourages the introduction of valuable DVDs into the system, and eliminates the problems of getting stuck with a DVD you just wanted to watch, not own. But again, for me, I mostly want to watch them, not own them. I think all users however have some DVDs they want to own, and some they want to just watch. Peerflix (and I presume cinexchange) don’t offer that choice, though with cinexchange you can be rid of it at a loss.

eBay has a very large selection of movies, far larger than Peerflix or Cinexchange. If eBay wanted to do work to streamline the “trading” of movies, they could effectively build a better cinexchange. Movies in the trading pool would have a fixed shipping price (60 cents for single disk only, more for multi-disk, and a bit more and slower — media mail — for disk with case if available.) There would be no time-wasting reserve auctions and every auction would have a buy it now with an auto-caculator to help set it based on past sales.

Such a system could outdo peerflix and cinexchange since it could use the eBay reputation to assure disk quality, a leg-up eBay has over everybody else. And here you are not trading for peerbux or cinexchange points, it’s plain old cash, whose value is well understood.

When it comes to a market system, the best way to get fair prices is to have the largest market with the most sellers and buyers. eBay is way ahead of everybody here.