Last night I decided to switch from DVD Unlimited to Fatso. DVD Unlimited has always been good on service. As soon as I mail back a couple of rentals, two more immediately appear in the post.

But, like my DVD rental home-before-last (Movieshack) it's failed to feature several Hollywood releases that are only marginally out of the mainstream - if indeed No Country for Old Men can be labelled as such, now that it's won an Oscar on top of its critical acclaim. Country is already on reserve at Fatso. The same goes for The Darjeeling Limited, and other films in the vaguely-alternative Rialto oeuvre, plus UK fare like The Queen. (This is on top of a frustration I've experienced with all the DVD rental outfits: for flexibility, you have to maintain, via their websites, a list of 20 or so films you want to see, ranked the order you want to see them. But more often than not, they cut from the bottom of the deck.)

And it's not just a case of DVD Unlimited preferring low-brow over middle brow. At times even straight popcorn fare hasn't made the selection, forcing me back to the horrors of Blockbuster where, overly-acclimatised to the languid return cycles of mail services, I racked up a $28 fine for returning In Her Shoes three days late.

I'm not sure if it's a case of someone at DVD Unlimited having undiscerning taste, or simply that its owner - Sky TV - likes to hold a few goodies for its broadcast wing. Regardless, I'm out.

DVD Unlimited won't miss me. Long term, it's in the box seat, as only Sky TV has the capital and infrastructure (an IPTV upgrade of its decoder is in the works) to relatively easily transition to an internet download model (see our recent stories on iTunes' new movie download service in the US, and Netflix' potential streaming service for Sony PlayStation3 owners).