Within a few days of Redbox announcing Blu-ray rental availability from their nationwide network of kiosks, I swung by for confirmation. And, as it turned out, their press release was overly optimistic — neither Blu-ray title availability or even a category in the UI was found at my closest outpost (MickeyD’s). But when Engadget was tipped that Blu-ray rentals have started turning up (for real), I once again braved smells of the worst hamburgers in America to discover the truth. Low and behold, this particular Redbox now contains three lonely Blu-ray titles renting at the expected $1.50/nt rate.
While I’m not much into physical media rentals these days, there’s no question a lot of people appreciate movie rental kiosks. With their growing retal footprint (CVS is next) and absence of a surly staff, I quite imagine their success has been hastening the end of the brick & mortar video store.
Click to enlarge:
Interesting factoids: the Redbox press release stated each box contains up to 630 discs, generally including up to 200 titles.
I’ll use Redbox for some instant gratification when Netflix fails me.
I finally saw a redbox kiosk ( first time for me ) here in Austin. It’s out front of the grocery store, in the parking lot, exposed to the elements ( Texas heat 108+ degrees ).
Covered in grime and dust, with no evidence any one uses it, screen, buttons just as dusty as the rest of it. I have never seen anyone standing in front of it, getting or returning a video.
They just seem so odd, like a public pay telephone (RIP) and I struggle to see how they are profitable. What do those things cost to own/operate? $50,000.00 for the machine plus a satellite connection? So one lone Luddite ( who still has a Motorola Star Tac! ) can rent one video every other month for two bucks?
Todd, by me there are often people lined to use them in the super market and McDonalds. In fact, some locations have two kiosks.
The first Redbox I encountered was in probably around 2002 or so. There were two units, one for movies and one for convenience store stuff, collocated in a McDonalds parking lot and on my walk home from the subway (when I used to commute that way). They didn’t see much use. Maybe people prefer air conditioning when browsing movie rentals.
It’s just me I guess.
I assume there are just two predominant use cases;
Either you rent a the video store – OR – for use the on demand rental from your cable TV provider. Nothing (profitable ) in-between. Everything is is such a tiny, fractional, vertical use case, it qualifies as a statistical rounding error from the perspective of the film distributors.
Physical disc rental at local brick and mortar store: 49.9%
On demand rental from cable TV: 49.9%
Other ( redbox ): 0.1%
Other, other: Google TV 0.00000000000001% (me! )
Your equation is off… disc rental via Netflix is probably a sizable chunk and kiosks scare the studios enough to sue Redbox.
I hit up a redbox for a $1 movie more often than I pay $4+ for VOD. .. they are convenient enough around me that, they aren’t out of the way. If a “new” release hits their box, I just reserve it online and pick it up on my way home from work.
“there’s no question a lot of people appreciate movie rental kiosks. With their … absence of a surly staff”
That was the best part of video rental stores.
Surly retail staff are generally vaguely annoying, but the surly retail staff in video rental stores tended to be top-notch folk.
Now, if you want good surly retail staff, all that’s left are baristas…
There are Redbox kiosks all over the place in the Chicago area (which makes sense, since the company is headquartered here.) Every Wal-Mart has a kiosk, and it’s rare to walk by one that’s not being used, especially when people are coming home from work.
I’m a Netflix subscriber, but I think Netflix’s Blu-ray pricing is too much (it doesn’t seem right to charge an extra $1/disc-out-at-a-time if I’m not renting solely Blu-ray discs). I’ve therefore been using Redbox to rent the occasional Blu-ray movies, but I’m still really frustrated that I can’t reserve Blu-ray discs online (or even check availability).
(BTW, shame on misspelling Blu-ray in the article title!)
Redbox has updated their web site to show Blu-ray titles and allow you to reserve Blu-ray titles. You can do this with the iPhone app, also.
I bought a Blu-ray player a few months ago when our local Redbox started renting Blu-rays. I’d rather pay $1.50 to rent rather than 5 or 6 bucks to stream.
Redbox is AWESOME when traveling with children. You can return a rented disc to any Redbox location. So, you can pick up a title for the kids in one location, and return it 2-3 hours down the road.
@BTN: Ah, I stand corrected! (I know one of my local Redbox kiosks had Avatar on Blu-ray before, and I kept checking the website to see if it showed up, but I didn’t notice that other movies were listed as being available on Blu-ray.) Sweet!