Spotlight: Free DVD Rentals

Plenty to do for this weekend! Among the offerings:

– Free admission to the Portland Art Museum on Friday, from 5:00pm – 8:00pm

– Hillsboro’s Main Library has ‘Groovin at the Library‘ Friday night from 7:30pm – 8:30pm, featuring the Montavilla Brass Quintet

– Saturday choose from a free Homeownership Fair; PCC’s 9th annual Harvest Festival (with free admission to the Washington County Historical Society Museum); community Health Fairs in Milwaukie, Battleground and Vancouver’s Community A.M.E. Zion Church; the Portland Zombie Walk at 3:30pm in downtown; the events of the Portland 350 Global Day of Action; and FREE waffles from 9:00am – 3:00pm at FlavorSpot during their 3rd anniversary SpotFest:09

– Sunday take part in Family Bicycle Transportation Day at Oregon Manifest Bike Union

– For more free weekend happenings, go to Aroundthesunblog

– Willamette Week’s new Cheap Skate deal box features half-off Halloween tattoos, bike mechanic school open house, a free concert and more.

Spotlight: Free DVD Rentals

We love our movies, and we go out perhaps twice a month to see a movie on the big screen, but mostly we watch on the small screen in the comforts of home. Here are some ways to score some free DVD rentals for the long winter ahead.

– Redbox rental kiosks are found at a variety of locations around the Portland area inside of Fred Meyers, Albertsons, and McDonalds. Most rentals are just $1.00 a night, but get them free by using a special code at checkout at InsiderRedBox.com, or combined with other promotions (for example, buy a certain McDonald’s value meal and get a free rental).

– A direct competitor is DVDXpress, found inside grocery stores such as Haggen, Lambs, Thriftway, Roth’s and Food 4 Less. Use the special codes listed here upon check out for your free rental. Provide your email address to the service and you’ll get you’ll also receive occasional BOGO free offers.

– Netflix: get a free 2-week trial for their mail-service DVD rentals. Great selection to choose from, but just remember to cancel before the end of the trial period! At one time they offered a 30-day trial, but they wised up and now it is limited to 2 weeks.

– Blockbuster by Mail: similar 2-week trial as offered by Netflix. The advantage is that you can sign up for their 3 DVDs at a time with 5 in-store exchanges. What that means is when you are finished with one DVD, instead of mailing it back and waiting for your next DVD on the queue, just go to your local Blockbuster and exchange it for one on the shelf and save yourself the wait.

– Borrow from your friends or co-workers, start up an exchange! Chances are that you must know somebody with a huge inventory of the latest movies…

– Columbia House DVD Club. Um, we said rentals, and Columbia House is not for that, so we do not recommend it. You know the drill: get 3 DVDs for free or for $1 each and just pay shipping and handling AND buy 3 more movies at regular price during the year…and don’t forget that you’ll get a monthly director’s featured selection mailed to you and if you don’t cancel in time, guess what?….yeah, no thanks!!!

– And drum roll please for our favorite method of getting free DVD movie rentals…ta da!…. it’s at our local library! Log-in online and reserve a copy of the DVD and just wait until it is your turn on the waiting list. Even the most popular movies like Transformers 2 will have 20 or more copies available, and if you own a Blu-Ray then you’re in the minority and you’ll get your rental much sooner. Take a spin at Washington County, Multnomah County, Clackamas County (new link for 13 libraries provided by Jon) and Fort Vancouver Regional libraries!

If you know of any other ways of scoring some free DVD rentals, we’d love to hear them so please leave a comment and share. Thanks for reading and for your support!