For those of you trying to keep up with the HD format war it seems that things have taken an interesting turn lately. Earlier this week Paramount and DreamWorks studios, who were previoulsy supporting both formats, announced that they were switching to strictly HD-DVD. While it’s still unsure which format will eventually win the competition, this latest change doesn’t look good for Blu-ray fans out there. Does anyone out there have a preference between the two formats?

Tomorrow is Tuesday and we just wanted to remind you of some of the new movies that hit the shelves this week. These are great titles to pick up, watch, and then trade on through the Peerflix network for something just as good. It seems like some of these titles were just in the theaters. Personally, I’m looking forward to seeing 300, anyone have any recommendations for this week’s releases?

On July 12, 2006 when we launched the PeerMailer with printed postage and tracking all existing members were informed that Peerflix would pay the $0.12 fee for 1 year. This is just a reminder that beginning July 13, 2007 all members will be charged the $0.12 printing and tracking fee. The total cost to receive DVDs from Peerflix for all members will now be:

• $1.52 for 1 disc
• $1.69 for 2 discs

For all you movies fans out there CBS is airing a special tonight at 8pm to announce AFI’s 100 Years…100 Movies - 10th Anniversary Edition. Back in 1998 the top 5 movies were: 1) Citizen Kane, 2) Casablanca, 3) The Godfather, 4) Gone with the Wind, and 5) Lawrence of Arabia. I doubt that these will move around that much, but who knows. The full 1998 list as well as other AFI Top 100 lists are available on the AFI website. Some of the 43 new additions to this years ballot include American Beauty, Crash, Fight Club, Finding Nemo, Gladiator, the Lord of the Rings Trilogy, and Traffic. Do you think any these new movies will make the cut? What are your top picks?

We just launched some new product features today, and here’s a quick recap:

Give a Friend a FREE DVD

Have you been looking for that perfect reason to invite one of your non-Peerflix friends to join? Now you can give them a free DVD. Just click the ‘Give Your Friends a Free DVD’ button at the top of the page and they’ll be able to choose a free DVD when they join Peerflix. The offer is only available to NEW members. See the offer Terms and Conditions for details.

My Friends’ Interests

Go to any DVD detail page and you’ll be able to see what connection your friends have with that particular DVD. So if one of your friends has it, wants it, reviewed it, rated it, etc. you’ll know on that page. It’s a great way to see if one of your friends have a DVD that you want or want a DVD that you have.

New Community Page
We launched a new and better community page. From the new page, you can find all recent photos and videos, as well as the last 20 message wall posts. Additionally, you can see the tag cloud for the entire Peerflix community which has not been available until now.

New Profile Themes

Customize your profile by applying one of the 19 Peerflix themes. Simply click the ‘Change Theme’ link on your profile page to customize your profile.

My Trade History

We’ve added member information to your trade history. That means you can now see all of the Peerflix members that you’ve sent to and received for your entire trade history. Go to My Account and then My Trade History.

As always, there are also a bunch of smaller changes that all combine to make for a better member experience. Take a look around the site when you get the chance to see all of the great new stuff.

Oh, and while you’re at it, take a minute to invite your friends to they can get a free DVD.

- Bryan

Ever seen a movie where someone gets hit on the head and gets special powers?  Or sells their soul to the devil?  Well, something just like that recently happened here at Peerflix HQ.   Recently, Barnaby sold his soul for the ability to tell what kind of DVDs someone likes based on having them make 21 simple choices.  Since he’d given up an awful lot to get this “gift”, he decided to pass it along to you, our users.  He christened this “The Peerflix Matchmaker”.  It works really simply: we show you two DVDs, and you click on the one you like better.  If you haven’t seen one (or both) of the DVDs in question, no worries – you can either skip the question, or click on the one you think you’d like more.  Once you’ve gone through the 21 pairings of DVDs, we’ll show you a summary page where we guess what kind of movies you might like.  You can make changes on this page, and then once you’re done, we’ll use your results to recommend DVDs to you. 

To get to the matchmaker, click the “Personalize This” link in the top-right hand corner of the ‘Popular DVDs’ module on the home page after you login to the site.  Once you’ve finished the matchmaker, the ‘Popular DVDs’ module on the home page will change to ‘DVDs you’ll like’, and we’ll show you titles based on your matchmaker choices. 

And finally, here’s what’s coming soon from the Matchmaker game: the ability to re-play the game, the ability to see how other people scored relative to you, and the ability to find people who like the same genres as you do.

- Rob 

Don’t have DVDs you want to sell or enough trade cash to get what you want? Now you can simply click on the blue “Buy it Now” buttons wherever you see them on the site, choose what editions you want, and we will request if from another member for you.  Once someone commits to send, we will charge your credit card for the trade cash and normal fees. There are thousands of great DVDs available to choose from.  For recent releases, take a look at the 2006 and 2007 release sections. Check out the $3, $4, and $5 browse sections for great deals today.

2007 Releases

$3 DVDs

- Barnaby

We just launched a suite of cool new features, so let’s jump right to it.

Upload your videos
Rather than write your reviews, why not put your webcam to use and do a video review. Or even better, how about re-enacting or spoofing your favorite scene. However you decide to use the the video upload feature, it’s definitely going to add a lot of great content to the website. And the great thing is that uploading videos is easy. Simply visit the video gallery of your profile or any DVD or Group page and follow the instructions. You’ll be prompted to install the video player software, but it’s very fast and very simple. So now you’ve finally found a good audience for all of those vacation clips you’ve shot over the years. So feel free to upload that clip of the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace on The Queen detail page.

Buy it Now
Want to guarantee that you get a movie? Well now you can do that by clicking the ‘Buy it Now’ button for movies where it is an option. When you do, we’ll automatically match you with a seller of that movie and charge your credit card for the purchase and transaction fees.

Member contributions
Now you can find all of the contributions of individual members on that member’s profile page. Want to see how they’ve rated or reviewed certain movies, or looking for their tags? Now you can get all of that info and more on the member’s profile page.

New and improved profile page
The member profile pages have been a huge success, and now we’ve made them even better. They have a great new standard format, but we’ve also added several themes that you can use to customize your page. Take a minute to visit your profile page and add some new content to give other members a better sense of who you are.

Matchmaker game
Play the Matchmaker game so that we have a better sense of your movie tastes. We’ll use your results to customize the DVDs you see on the home page. And coming soon, we’ll show you how your results compare to other members so you can find people that have the same tastes as you. To play the Matchmaker game, go to your homepage and click the ‘Personalize This’ link in the top right corner of the Popular DVDs section.

Get more chances to send your DVDs
We want to help you send the things you have, so we added a new option for how to handle the DVDs you receive. You an choose to mark them as ‘Keep’ for 10 days or mark them as ‘Keep’ indefinitely. The default choice is to keep them for 10 days which means they’ll qualify to be matched with other members 10 days after you confirm receipt. If you would rather hold your DVDs indefinitely until you specifically unmark them as ‘Keep’, you can easily set that preference by going to My Account.

Edition Preferences
Do you prefer only Widescreen or Fullscreen editions? Now you can set your preferences in My Account so that when you click ‘Want It’ you only get the screen format of your choice.

As always, there are also a ton of other changes and features that we added, so hop over to the website and take a look around. Enjoy!

- Bryan

One of the things I’m always curious about (both in life and an on Peerflix) is what my friends are up to.  Until recently it was really difficult to see what my Peerflix friends were doing on a day-to-day basis.  In fact, the only way to get a real sense for what was going on in their worlds was to go to their profile pages and look at their Have and Want lists – something that’s no easy task when you have a bunch of friends.  

Making it easier to see what’s going in your world was the inspiration for Recent Friend Activity (which was Barnaby’s brilliant idea – I’m just writing the blog entry about it).  The goal was to create an easy-to-read area where you could see how your friends are using Peerflix.  This means that you can see the titles your friends are adding to their Have, Want and Favorite lists, rating and reviewing.  Plus, you can see the friends that your friends are making (which is always helpful when you’re looking to expand your circle of friends). 

Moving forward, we’ll try to find new and inventive ways to show you what’s happening in your circle of friends.  Stay tuned!

- Rob

On May 14, 2007, the US Postal Service is changing its first class postage fees as stated on the USPS website.  As a result, we will be changing the postal fees charged for receiving DVDs via Peerflix.  The new postal fees will be as follows:

1 disc - Increase from $0.51 to $0.53
2 discs - Decrease from $0.75 to $0.70

Thanks,

Bryan