The idea of home delivery DVDs might seem fairly ludicrous considering Cairo’s congested traffic. A night in with friends, popcorn and a weepy movie might end up being spent watching Rotana Zaman while “Gone with the Wind sits in a traffic jam on the 26 July Bridge.
Perhaps this pessimism is just a case of that malady known as Khawaga skepticism. My order from Gad is always delivered – sometimes an hour after I place my order – and with the proliferation of those nifty little scooters, there’s no reason DVD home delivery shouldn’t be a great success.
Of course ordering online, or at the very least perusing www.egdvd.com collection, does require a swift internet speed – when you’re filching a connection off your neighbor, and your neighbor is filching off the guy downstairs, this tends to slow things down.
Their website is pretty simple to navigate, however, which made me a little more patient despite an intolerably slow connection. Depending on your mood, you flick through the choices of Romance, Comedy, War, Thriller, Sport, TV series and many more. However, nothing seems to be in alphabetical order, so depending on how much ‘egdvd’ customers’ favor spontaneity rather than looking for something specific, the success of the website itself could go either way.
What is quite impressive, however, is the information given about the film. Passing over it with your mouse brings up a synopsis, cast, release date and the running time. Feeling a little whimsy, I decided to dip into their romance section. It seemed pretty impressive, displaying over 100 films. For a start up company, that’s not bad, providing the customer isn’t too fussy and isn’t, of course, a complete movie addict – those may be disappointed.
The romance section includes all the usual Hollywood clichés: “The Legend of Bagger Vance, “Music and Lyrics, and the entire series of both “Friends and “Roswell, which together took up a good four pages, peppered with a few classics such as “Some like it Hot – a poor attempt to satisfy real movie lovers.
Then I moved on to their comedy section to take a quick tour. Although there are over 30 pages of films, I was horrified when I saw the “Police Academy series, a 1980s throwback that isn’t even still available in my ancient video-shop, among the featured DVDs.
And the price? For unlimited DVDs with next-day delivery, the price is LE 125 per month. The downside is you can only take out one DVD at a time. If you pay an extra LE 100 a month, you can take two out DVDs at a time.
Without wanting to make a sweeping judgment on potential customers, any hardcore movie fan is going to demand a wider range of intelligent films than the range on offer.
Will it go down a hit? With film downloading on the increase, and a movie a moment aired on satellite, it just doesn’t seem worth it to pay to watch the same movies on satellite. What would be worth if was if ‘egdvd.com’ offered more alternative and obscure films, which unfortunately, it doesn’t. Relying on people’s bad taste is one thing, but relying on them to pay for it is another issue entirely.
