We don’t rent that many DVDs in my house, so I’ve never gotten around to signing up with Netflix. I can usually find something to watch at the DVDXpress kiosk in my local supermarket, which rents recent releases for just $1 a day. If there’s a specific movie I can’t get there, I can generally find it on my cable company’s on demand service. But at $4.95 a pop, I try to use that as little as possible.

What I can’t get from the kiosk or cable on demand are compilations of TV series, like Showtime’s Dexter and The Tudors. I toyed with the idea of subscribing to Showtime, but that would run me $16 a month with the on demand option, which I’d need to catch up on previous seasons. I could also rent those series from Netflix, but that would cost at least $8.99 a month  I kept dragging my feet, reluctant to take on another recurring entertainment expense--I’m already paying about $125 a month for my cable TV with DVR, plus phone and Internet triple play.

Then the light bulb went off. I remembered that we ran a blog on borrowing DVDs from the public library. I reread it and noticed that one reader said his library carried TV series. I checked, and so did mine. In fact, it had both of the series I wanted to watch. 

Better late than never. Now I’m looking forward to enjoying many hours of mayhem with Dexter’s sympathetic serial killer and the randy royals in the Tudors.

The moral of my story: If you haven’t checked out your local library’s video section in a while, give it a once-over. You might be happily surprised by what you find. Some libraries are even starting to carry Blu-ray discs, noted one reader of our previous blog. We've also seen some with video games for the Wii and Xbox 360. Others are likely to follow suit, so dust off your library card and hit the stacks! —Eileen McCooey

Photo Courtesy of Flickr.