While sitting in the AME’s waiting room, filling out the application, I noticed a stack of brochures on the table for a company called AVNAC.com. Maybe this is old news, but it appears to be a service similar to Netflix, but for those of us with aviation interests. Their brochure says you can rent aviation videos with no monthly fee, no commitments, free shipping, free membership, all while paying as you go. It sounds pretty good to me.
From what I’ve read on their site, it differs slightly from the Netflix model in that you pay per video rented, rather than a monthly membership fee, and you have 10 days to watch and return the video. With my hectic schedule, I like the idea of paying per rental better than paying a flat monthly fee. At first glance their list of videos seems fairly extensive, covering a wide range of aviation interests. I’ve already found a bunch of videos that interest me, so it looks like this might be worth a try. I’ll be sure to report back when I do.
Update: OK, I just rented my first video, and I have some first impressions. Their web site is OK, with user reviews and in some cases video samples. After I created an account, while navigating the site I received a lot of warnings from my browser (IE) about components of certain pages not being secure. I clicked “OK” to get past the warnings, and found I could eliminate them altogether by navigating back to their homepage and starting my search over, but this is something that could use some improvement. My only other piece of feedback is about their prices; the FAQs state that videos rent as low as $4.49, but most every video I looked at was $9.49. Not bad when you consider that buying some of these DVDs would run you $50 to purchase, but at $10 a pop I am not going to be renting 3 or 4 videos a week. Anyway, so far so good. The video I rented wasn’t immediately available, so I’ll just have to see how long it takes to receive… more soon.
Update to the update: I just received and email telling me my DVD has shipped. Cool! That wasn’t much of a delay.
