Well, I’ve started listing a handful of DVDs on Peerflix in an attempt to see how well it works. I’m sending out a handful of discs to people who requested them, and I’ve been waiting all weekend for someone to select one of the DVDs I want to send to me…

You start by listing the DVDs that you own and are willing to get rid of on your account page. These are the discs that you are adding to the floating library that is Peerflix.

Now, there are two account balances that you need to concern yourself with in this system; Peerbux and Trades. It comes down to paying the person that is sending you the DVD as well as paying the Peerflix for brokering the trade. Peerbux are the currency that’s traded between users of the system, and you pay Peerflix 99 cents for brokering the trade (they’ll accept Paypal, but it’s not integrated into the system). You will pay 1-3 Peerbux for any regular DVD you want to have send to you, and you will gain a similar number of Peerbux for sending out any DVD to another member. You can either buy Peerbux from the company or you can liberate some of your unwanted DVDs to earn them.

My theory is that if you can send out 10 DVDs, then you’re likely to have a Peerbux balance of 20-30 which can be good for 10-15 DVDs, and then you’ll only have to pay the brokerage fee of $0.99 per DVD you order. Well, you also have to pay postage on anything you send out, but that’s about 50 cents per disc, as you only send the discs, and not the boxes.

The system also allows you to print out disc mailers that are pretty decent; two pages, a bit of origami folding and some tape, and it’s ready to mail.

Things that I’d suggest to improve the experience;

• * I’d like to see this system have a more friendly browsing system; the ability to easily flip to page 30 in a large set of results rather than hitting “next page” over and over.
• The Friends Program will credit you with 1 Peerbux for each person that signs up and makes 5 trades (at 99 cents per, remember). Adding people to your friends list requires that you email them; you can’t browse for them, even if you know they exist on the system; you still need to email them outside of the system.
• There’s little to no indication of how long you will have to wait for a disc to come your way. There’s no requirement for people to send the DVDs on after they recieve them, so if there is only one disc of the movie you want to see in the Peerflix Universe, and someone opts to keep it, you stall indefinitely. The unpredictability of Peer2Peer applied to the physical world, and I’m not sure that there’s anything that can be done to improve this. Perhaps giving people an extra Peerbux for turning over an in-demand DVD in short order?
• I’d like to be able to add DVDs by something other than the UPC code off the back. I have a First Season set of The Simpsons, and the UPC for it is not on the box itself; it was on a loose paper that was tossed out. Let me search the system and click on “I Have This DVD Available To Trade” rather than just “Add To DVDs I Want.”

One nice touch is the recent addition of RSS feeds; I can post my list of DVDs that I have available, DVDs that I want, in addition to lists of DVDs new to the Peerflix system, etc.

There’s also The Peerflix Blog adds suggestions and movie reviews from the staff and feature changes.