Tuesday, August 11, 2009

GreenCine Availability Statuses Decoded

On the surface, GreenCine's availability indication system seems incredibly simple. The system is based on weighted colors bars and is a bit similar to the Department of Homeland Security's terror threat level system. In order, the colors bars are green, blue, yellow, orange, and red. A long green bar indicates a high probability you will receive a particular title while a short red bar indicates a very low probability you will receive a particular title.

There is one problem with this availability system, however. Any title with less than green availability may take a tremendous amount of time to ship. Basically, if a title's availability is blue, yellow, orange, or red, you are likely to face a very long wait to see it. Since GreenCine's availability system is deceptively simple, here is a proposed summary of what each availability indicator color actually means.

Green - We will send this to you in the next 24 hours.

Blue - Although the blue status might give you a lot of hope, it is very possible we will not send this title to you, even if you have had an empty shipping slot in your queue for days.

Yellow - Honestly, you are embarrassing yourself. Even though you have had multiple empty shipping slots in your queue all week, we are not going to send this movie to you. So have some pride and remove it from your queue.

Orange - Our last copy of this movie came back scratched three years ago, and we have not gotten around to ordering a replacement. We think we saw the DVD on Amazon for like $10 the other day.

Red - Seriously, we're not even sure if this is an actual movie.