Redbox Automated Retail LLC now enables consumers to get their hands on new DVD releases for $1 a night, using a debit or credit card, via any of 10,000 kiosks nationwide.
While users don’t need an Internet connection, they can reserve titles online as opposed to having them dispensed in person. And at a buck a night, Redbox is 80 percent less than the common $4.99 per pay-VoD movie. Plus it doesn’t charge late fees. And customers don’t need cable or telco TV services. All of the above would seem to make it particularly attractive during this time of economic hardship when many families are staying at home eating grilled cheese and Campbell’s soup rather than going out for dinner and a movie.
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| Redbox offers new release movies for $1 via kiosks at many drug and grocery stores nationwide. |
“It’s a great business model that undercuts VoD and PPV offerings, especially when they run $3 more per movie,” said Jeff Heynen, directing analyst for broadband and video at Infonetics Research. “All I know is that every time I go to the grocery store, the queue to either rent or return movies is at least five deep,” he added.
Perhaps hoping to shorten primetime lines, Redbox offers a free rental to those who rent a movie and return it by primetime TV hours.
The Redbox kiosks are located in supermarkets and convenient stores as well as in Walgreens pharmacies, Wal-Mart stores and McDonalds in select markets. Redbox offers a kiosk locator function on its Web site.
The company says each kiosk holds about 700 DVDs, representing up to 200 of the newest movie releases. Consumers simply use a touch screen to select their favorite movies, swipe a valid credit or debit card and wait less than a minute.
Customers can keep the DVD for as long as they’d like for $1 per night plus tax. After 25nights, rental charges cease and the DVD is the customer’s to keep, says Redbox. That, however, is more expensive than even first-day releases consumers buy to keep.
By comparison, highly touted over-the-top box approaches require a decent speed Internet connection, a roughly $100 box or iPod, cables, and often a monthly pay-service subscription.
To be fair, Redbox doesn’t have the couch potato convenience factor in its favor as movies must be picked up at — and returned to — a kiosk. However, Heynen believes that is something of a non-issue.
