Website – LOVEFiLM

Improving your rental list – update 2 By andrew.bowden on Thursday February 28, 2013

Update 28/02/13: New rental list is now live.

Last year we let some of you try-out a new Rental List design. Following your feedback (thanks everyone!), we’ve added the most requested features and made some final design tweaks.

The new Rental List is now available to customers, and includes:

Cleaner, Clearer, Clutter-free Layout

We’ve updated the page layout, contrast and colour-coding to make it easier to identify different areas of the list and distinguish between the titles you’ve added to it.

High, Normal & Low Priority

We tested a two-tiered priority system, but this proved to be unpopular. So the new Rental List features the three-tiered High, Normal, and Low priority system that you’ll be familiar with.

Changing Disc Format

You can change disc format (from DVD to Blu-ray, for example) without leaving the list. Click the drop down arrow next to the format you’d like to change. If the drop down arrow is not visible, it means that other formats are not available at that time.

Moving Titles between Multiple Lists

If you have multiple lists set up, you can move titles between lists with just one click. To move a title to a different list, use the arrow to the right of the title’s priority setting. You can learn more about the benefits of using multiple lists here.

Viewing 200 Titles per Page

You can now view up to 200 titles per page on the new Rental List. Which is great for those of you with long lists.

We hope you enjoy all the features and improvements that the new Rental List offers – as ever, please do feedback…

Website updates – New LOVEFiLM Instant Watchlist By Stephen Field on Thursday December 13, 2012

Today sees the launch of the LOVEFiLM Instant Watchlist on the LOVEFiLM website.

You can now add any LOVEFiLM Instant title to a list, ready to play later. The Watchlist also makes it easy to store and keep track of all the movies & TV shows you’re currently watching.

It’s very simple: as you’re browsing the LOVEFiLM website, you’ll see a new yellow “Add to Watchlist” button next to all LOVEFiLM Instant titles. Click the button and that film or TV show will be added to your Watchlist.

Go to the Watchlist page (you’ll find this link at the top right of any page), and you’ll see all of your additions listed (if they’re still available to stream). Your most recent Watchlist additions will be listed first. You can also filter your Watchlist to show just Films, just TV shows, or All titles.

Removing titles from your Watchlist is easy too…

On the Watchlist page, click the “Remove” link beneath any titles to get rid of it (a handy “Undo” link appears afterwards, just in case you hit “Remove” by accident).
On the website in general, just click the “Remove from Watchlist” yellow button – these will be next to any film or TV show on your Watchlist.

The Watchlist has been the most frequently request from LOVEFiLM Instant members, so we’re delighted to launch it and really hope it improves your LOVEFiLM Instant experience.

And if you have any feedback, such as new features you’d like to see added to the Watchlist, please let us know via the comments below…

Steven Field, Head of Product

Website updates – new features and improvements… By Simon Waldman on Friday November 30, 2012

From today, we’re making some changes to the LOVEFiLM website. We hope these changes make it easier for you to find great movies & TV to watch, not just on your PC or laptop, but on your PS3, Xbox, iPad or Kindle Fire as well. And not just on LOVEFiLM Instant, but on DVD and Blu-ray too.

We’re rolling out gradually and all of these changes are in response to comments, questions and suggestions from you, our members, so we hope you like them.

A new look and feel
The masthead is now slimmer, so that you can see much more content when you first come to the site. Please note that the link to your rental list (if you have one) has moved from the masthead – it’s now neatly situated between the Your Account, Help, and Sign in/out links at the top right of any page.

A customised experience for LOVEFiLM Instant customers
LOVEFiLM Instant customers will see a different navigation bar, letting you chose immediately between Films and TV shows. Also, the search box defaults to searching only our catalogue of streaming titles. You can, of course, still browse our DVD and Blu-ray catalogue using the drop-down arrow to the left of the Search box…

Filter your search
All customers can use that drop-down arrow to filter searches: choose from All titles, Instant, DVD & Blu-ray, or Games.

Improved presentation of TV series and episodes
If you’ve been watching Lost* or Grey’s Anatomy, for example, you’ll have noticed that we had separate pages for every episode. And every episode turned up as an individual search result. Now, you can navigate between episodes in a season, or between seasons of a show, from a single page. Much more useful, we know you’ll agree.

* Lost has just been renewed on LOVEFiLM Instant, due to popular demand – it’ll be with us until at least 31 May, 2013.

Titles are sorted by ‘Most Viewed’ or ‘Production Date’
On any of our browse pages, by default the most watched titles are now at the top of the list, so you can immediately see the current most popular titles. You can still sort titles by ‘Member rating‘ if you wish, in addition to ‘Production year‘ (the date they were made), or ‘Date added‘ (when they became part of our catalogue).

DVDs & Blu-rays on a single page
There used to be separate pages for DVD & Blu-ray versions of a movie or TV series, which would appear as separate results on a search page. Now, there’s only one page for a title, with all the formats available collected together in one handy place – eg. The Social Network

As always, we welcome your feedback – that’s what has powered all these current changes and updates. And there are more to come…

Simon Waldman, Group Product Director

Improving your rental list – update By Simon Waldman on Wednesday April 4, 2012

Update 20/6/12: We’re switching back to the old list for a couple of days as we make some performance improvements, and prepare to roll it out as a default to all customers without low priority

Two weeks ago, we announced a number of changes to the rental list and gave some of you early access to the new list. As expected, the feedback flooded in, so – firstly – thanks for all your comments.

The new list is faster and cleaner, and those who’ve seen it are adding more titles to their list. But it’s clear from your responses that we got a few things wrong. So, we have a plan, which is as follows…

Low priority is staying

We decided to remove low-priority with good intentions, but it’s clear that that was a bad decision. We plan to make low-priority work fully within the new list, but that will take a bit of time to sort out. Hence our next move…

From 18 April: choose the list you want

We will soon start to make the beta release of the new list available to all customers. The default will be that if you currently have low-priority titles, you’ll see the old list; and if you don’t have any low-priority titles, you’ll see the new list. You will, however, be able to switch between lists at any time.

So you’ll still be able to add low-priority titles to your list on the website or on other devices. And on the beta of the new list, you’ll still see low priority titles, you just won’t be able to change a high or normal priority title to low priority.

When we fix low priority on the new list – we will move over to the new list

Keeping two lists live isn’t the best way of doing things, and the old list is particularly draining on our servers. So when we have full low priority functionality on the new list, we’ll start to move everyone over.

See up to 200 titles at a time

A consistent item of feedback related to the removal of the ’show all’ option (changing to a fixed view of 50 titles). So we’ll amend this on the new list to give you the option of seeing 50, 100 or 200 titles. We’re not planning to go back to ’show all’ at this stage, I’m afraid, because activating this for members with very long lists causes knock-on performance issues. A 200 title view will allow most people to see their entire list at a glance, while also ensuring the list is faster than before.

An easy way to move low priority titles to a new list with no dispatches allocated

We know that some of you love your low priority, and some use it to list LOVEFiLM Instant titles for watching online – if that’s you, you could create a dedicated list for this with no dispatches allocated to it. We’ll soon be providing a one click solution to make this even easier. Ultimately, of course, we’ll provide a new and dedicated list for LOVEFiLM Instant titles. More on this soon, but in the meantime, you can find multiple lists here.

Bug fixing

We’ve already fixed a number of bugs, most notably the hovers that disappeared on some lists. Please keep letting us know if you find something isn’t working – we’re committed to getting this absolutely right for you, so thanks again for all your comments…

Simon Waldman, Group Product Director

Improving your Rental list By Simon Waldman on Thursday March 15, 2012

Update: we’re keeping low priority – more details to follow

Today, I’m pleased to reveal some changes to the Rental list page. We’re always speaking to our members about how to keep improving LOVEFiLM, and the need for a more simplified, easier to use Rental list page was coming over loud and clear. We’ve also introduced some new features that we hope you’ll enjoy too.

New ‘look and feel’

It’s cleaner and less cluttered, but we’ve retained all of the great features from the previous version, including:

Titles at home panel, which displays the titles you have at home
Main Rental list panel, where you can prioritise, move and remove titles
Reserved list panel, where you can add titles that are yet to be released

The new features on the Rental list page include…

Change disc format

You can now change your disc format (from DVD to Blu-ray, for example, or from Xbox 360® to PS3™) on the page. If there is no option to do so, it means other formats are not available for that title.

Add titles to your Rental List without leaving the page

You can now add new releases without leaving the Rental list page, as we’ve introduced a New releases panel on the right hand side.

Prioritise your Reserved titles

You can now prioritise titles on your Reserved list – another much requested feature we are pleased to incorporate.

Direct access to your Rented titles and Rated titles from the Rental list page

Above the Titles at home panel, some handy new links give you direct access to titles you’ve previously rented and rated.

Easier management of multiple lists

If you have more than one list set up within your Rental list, we’ve simplified the display of those multiple lists. What’s this?

~~Simplified prioritising~~

Instead of using High, Medium and Low, the simplified priority system just uses High and Normal, which should make managing your list quicker and easier
Don’t worry if you currently have titles set to Low priority – they won’t be changed, but any new titles you add to your list can’t be assigned to Low priority
You might find it easier to manage low priority titles on a separate list altogether, and our multiple list system makes this all really easy – Find out more here

We hope you enjoy these changes and that they improve your LOVEFiLM experience. As always, we look forward to your feedback.

Simon Waldman, Group Product Director

A new lick of paint, and a few tweaks to our site By Simon Waldman on Friday December 2, 2011

You might have noticed some changes on the LOVEFiLM website today. We now sit in the centre of your screen. The navigation bar at the top has a new look and feel, and the eagle-eyed among you might have noticed the words ‘How it Works’ at the top there too. There’s also an expanding panel telling you what titles you’ve got at home.

I won’t go so far as to call it a ‘redesign’, but it’s certainly a significant tweak. And it’s the first in a series of changes we’re planning for the coming weeks and months, which we hope will improve your LOVEFiLM experience.

So what exactly have we done, and why?

Sitting in the centre of your screen

LOVEFiLM has always been aligned to the left. From today we’re sitting bang slap in the centre. It’s a bit tidier in general, but – more importantly – this new grid has allowed us to tidy up a lot of old code on our site, which in turn will allow us to make the site faster over the next few months.

A new ‘How it works’ section

The arrival of a streaming service has been the biggest change in our business over the last couple of years, accessible on a myriad of different devices. And nearly a quarter of our UK customers manage their postal accounts on a smartphone.

So the website is no longer just a place for adding titles to your rental list, it now has to act as a place to keep everyone informed of all the different ways that you can access LOVEFiLM and how to get the best out of the service.

Hence, a new ‘How it works‘ section, available from the main navigation.

We have details on all devices; as well as some top tips about the service as a whole. So, if you haven’t yet watched a movie on your PS3 or iPad, or ou want to manage your postal account with your iPhone, or you just want to know how to use multiple lists (so you and your children can share your account effectively), this is the first place to look.

And for more detailed queries, we still, of course, have a phenomenal Help and FAQs section.

The new Account panel

From speaking to lots of customers, we know how important it is to be able to see exactly which titles you have at home as quickly and easily as possible; and to make sure that you’re aware of any information that relates to your account.

So we’ve introduced what we call the account panel, just below the navigation. It replaces the simple strip we used to have at the top of the page. If you click on ‘Show’, this strip expands and automatically shows the titles that you have at home, along with details of your package.

This strip will also carry all announcements from us. Either ‘red’ warnings (that your credit card has expired, for example), or some lighter nudges and suggestions about how you might get more out of the service.

We’ve tried to get the balance right with making this useful, but not too intrusive. The simple rule is that it will appear when there is something new to tell you. You can always ‘hide’ the panel, or remove individual messages.

The best bits of our editorial, wherever you are on the site

On each and every page, just next to our logo (where there was previously a banner advertisement), we now have a strip that showcases our best features, reviews, big name interviews, competitions, picks of the month… all powered by our fantastic editorial team.

And there’s more coming…

These changes are just the first phase of a number of changes we’re making across the site. And we’ll keep you up to date as they go live in the coming weeks and months. In the meantime, I look forward to your feedback…

Simon Waldman, Group Product Director

LOVEFiLM Top Films of 2010 By Helen Cowley on Friday January 7, 2011

2011 is upon us, and while we’re looking ahead at the great films coming our way this year (see our 2011 Film Calendar for an up-to-date guide), it’s a great time to look back at the films our members loved in 2010.

As always, it was a truly diverse range of films and demonstrates just how eclectic tastes can be. While it’s perhaps unsurprising to see the likes of Inception, Sherlock Holmes and Shutter Island featuring heavily in these lists, it’s the smaller, more independent films – the likes of Lebanon and Fish Tank – that are such a welcome inclusion.

Take a look below and let us know what you think. I’m sure you’ll agree it’s a fascinating insight into what LOVEFiLM members are interested in.

Top 10 most read reviews on LOVEFiLM

6 Lebanon

9 The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

10 Extract