Unlimited Rentals Cost $240 a Year at Cinefile and $500 at Vidiots

The verdict runs on both stores’ own posted price lists, and it flips at the seventh disc of the month.

Unlimited movie rentals cost $240 a year at Cinefile Video and $500 at Vidiots. That's the widest gap on either store's price list, and it isn't the number most people need. Here's that one: seven. Under seven discs a month, Vidiots is cheaper every single month, and cheaper by more the less you rent. Over seven, Cinefile is, and from there the gap only opens. Los Angeles still has video stores, two of them publish a full price list, and the answer to which one you should join isn't a store. It's a number.

We read both lists today. Cinefile posts three ways in: Pay As You Go, no monthly fee and $5.50 a title, with late fees; 2 Disc Unlimited at $20 a month, two films out at a time with New Arrivals excluded; and 4 Disc Unlimited at $30, four out at a time with one New Arrival allowed. Both monthly tiers carry “No late fees—ever,” free entry to the store's weekly screenings, and 10 or 15 percent off purchases. Vidiots posts one line for rentals, “$2 for members or $3 for non-members,” and sells the membership separately, at $100, $250 or $500 a year for one person.

The crossover is seven discs a month

At Vidiots' walk-in rate a disc costs $3 every single time, which makes a movie a week $156 a year and two a week $312. Cinefile's $20 plan is $240 a year, flat, whether you come back twice or forty times. Three dollars a disc passes $240 at the 81st rental of the year, which works out to seven a month. Under seven, every path through Vidiots is cheaper. Over seven, every path through Cinefile is.

Vidiots' own membership doesn't move that line, because it isn't priced as a rental discount. Superfan costs $100 a year and takes a dollar off each rental, $2 instead of $3, so on rentals alone it pays for itself at exactly the hundredth disc of the year and not one disc sooner. What the $100 buys is the rest of the list: $3 off a member ticket to the theater in the same building, two free popcorns a year, a free rental on your birthday, no late fees, and seven-night rentals. As a ticket deal with a video store attached it's a fair price. As a way to make renting cheaper it's a hundred movies.

Vidiots, 4884 Eagle Rock Blvd. — the biggest catalog and the cheapest first try

The catalog is the only hard number either store publishes, and it arrives with a caveat the store volunteers: the FAQ says most of Vidiots' 70,000 titles are on DVD and Blu-ray, and that its 12,000-tape VHS collection generally does not go out, because the store is preserving those rather than renting them. The $3 non-member rate is still the single most useful price in this story, because it's the only one that lets you test a video store for the cost of a coffee, with no monthly plan to cancel afterward. Members get seven nights with a disc; the FAQ posts no rental period for anyone else, which is the one number this piece wanted from Eagle Rock and didn't get.

The store also answers “What are your hours?” twice on that same FAQ, with two different answers. One block posts the video store Monday to Wednesday noon–10 p.m., Thursday and Friday noon–11 p.m., Saturday 11 a.m.–11 p.m., Sunday 11 a.m.–10 p.m. The other, further down the page, posts Monday to Friday noon–10 p.m. and Saturday to Sunday 11 a.m.–10 p.m. They disagree by a full hour on Thursday, Friday and Saturday, the three nights a person is most likely to want a movie after work. The FAQ promises ample street parking around the store and points to a 29-car public lot nearby, then turns blunt: a lot of the neighboring businesses will tow, and may do it legally. Call (323) 474-6249 before a late drive.

Cinefile Video, 11280 Santa Monica Blvd. — the flat rate, and the only midnight shelf

Cinefile won't put a number on its wall. Its library page claims more titles for rent than all the major streaming services combined and stops there, which is the one count this comparison wanted from West Los Angeles and didn't get. What the store does post precisely is the pricing, and the internal math is worth knowing before you pick a tier: at $5.50 a title, the $20 monthly plan beats Pay As You Go from the fourth rental inside a single month, four discs being $22 against a flat $20. The catch on the cheap tier is one the store states itself. New Arrivals are excluded from the $20 plan, so the newest thing on the shelf is either a $30 membership or a $5.50 rental.

It also keeps the latest hours of any shelf in this story: noon to 8 p.m. Sunday through Thursday, and noon to midnight Friday and Saturday. Neither price list captures what that's worth. A movie you can still rent at 11:40 on a Friday night is a different product from a movie you can rent at 7, and Cinefile is the only one of the two selling it.

The pick worth arguing about

I'd put my $20 on Cinefile, and I know exactly how that reads next to a nonprofit with 70,000 titles, a 35mm booth and a $3 walk-in. The case is one line on the list. 2 Disc Unlimited is the only tier either store sells that stops charging you for curiosity: two out at a time, no late fees ever, $240 a year, and the fifteenth disc in a month costs the same as the second. The comparable shelf at Vidiots, unlimited rentals two movies at a time, is the $500 Super-Duper Fan Xtreme tier. That gap isn't a matter of taste. It's $260, and the only thing Cinefile's cheaper tier withholds is the new releases.

The counter is just as strong, which is why this is an argument and not a measurement. Vidiots charges nothing to find out whether you're the kind of person who rents movies. Three dollars, once, and if the next six months turn out to be busy ones you're out three dollars instead of carrying $20 a month through them. Pick the number of discs you'll hit in a slow month rather than a good one, and if it's under seven, Eagle Rock wins on price and keeps winning.

The third store, which we could not price

Vidéothèque belongs in this comparison and isn't ranked in it, because we couldn't get a price for it. It trades out of 4102 N. Figueroa St. in Highland Park, and the write-up we could read tonight, a Beatique piece on the store's arrival there, puts the catalog above 45,000 releases and the rental terms at three days on new movies and seven on everything else, with no price attached and no date on the page. Its own site returned an error at every web address we requested today, and a rental price copied out of a directory listing isn't a rental price. So it sits on the board, unranked, until it posts one or answers the phone.

What to do tonight

Cinefile is open until midnight on Friday and Saturday and until 8 the rest of the week. Vidiots closes at 10, or at 11, depending on which half of its FAQ you believe. One disc costs $3 at one and $5.50 at the other, and the seventh is where you should start taking this seriously.