Redbox Launches a New On-Demand Streaming Service

Megalith

Megalith

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Redbox has launched a new on-demand streaming service, On Demand, which will allow users to buy and rent digital movies and TV shows. The new service isn’t like Netflix or HBO: there are no subscription fees, and customers just pay for each movie or show they rent or buy. It’s basically a competitor to iTunes and Google Play.

"Redbox customers have asked, and today we're delivering an On Demand option that offers them the best of both the physical and digital worlds," said Galen Smith, CEO of Redbox. "Redbox provides our customers with choice – the value they want and expect from our kiosks, the instant gratification of On Demand rentals and purchases, and the availability of new-release content, all without monthly subscription fees."
 
It will fail. It is not any cheaper than services I already have access to. The whole point of Red Box is that you are trading the convenience of streaming for a lower price by driving and picking up a disk. Otherwise, I am going to rent it on Amazon with my promotional credits.
 
And nary a mention of "leveraging our brand" or other corporate drivel. Still, though...why? What is the point? They seem to be lacking any differentiation from the services offered by other players (players who haven't earned the animosity of studios quite the same way RedBox has).

If I owned Redbox, I'd invest enough to keep my kiosks working well and looking good, and that's about it. Yeah, your niche is dying, but why throw tons of money away? Ride it out and retire to a beach someplace. :p
 
Meh ... $3.99 for 48 hours. Slightly less than their Blu Ray rental prices at the kiosks. Which seem to be out of order too often, or have flubbed touch screens that are hard to use.

Personally, I'd much rather utilize my local Library which I pay for through taxes anyway. No fees, much longer loan times, new releases, and many TV series and obscure titles Red Box could not dream of. All reservable through a webpage and easily picked up at drive through which I am passing by anyway.
 
About the only thing I can think of is if kiosks made you enough money you can think about vertical integration. Or that they perceive a market niche for some form of distribution. Or both.
 
If Redbox is going to leverage anything it'd probably be licensing deals. Similarly priced, if they can get a better license rate than others they can make more money per rental. I don't see it working, exactly, but hey it's their risk to take.

Another possibility would maybe be advertising their service via the kiosks themselves, which would basically be autocannibalism if it worked, but would probably make them money in the long term since digital distribution is still cheaper than kiosks.

Can't really see it taking off though. The space is already too crowded and a lot of the people who use the kiosks don't have, can't afford, or can't get good broadband else why would you be renting discs in the first place?
 
Interesting this is happening at a time when Disney is suing them for providing the digital download codes to customers in the physical copies they've purchased for their kiosks.
 
Whether this kicks off or not, will probably come down to price more so than convenience. It's just as convenient to click 'Play' on YouTube and type in your credit card's 3 digit authentication key as visiting RedBox and to type in your credit card's 3 digit authentication key. Digital video for most folks is digital video. Once it reaches reasonable bit rate 720p, it's probably "good enough". I know most of my extended family is still watching Netflix 480p b/c they just don't want to pay for the HD version and think the 480p on their 1080p TVs looks comparable to their cable. So they have to probably win on price as they likely won't be able to win on the video quality front.
 
Seems completely pointless to me. The whole point of RB for me is being able to get high quality blu-ray media as opposed to pixelated "HD" streaming garbage. I'd gladly pay double what they charge for a disk, but I wouldn't pay half what their asking to stream.
 
Still cheaper than the $4.97 blockbuster was charging in 2007.

Redbox does lose that cheaper pricing by streaming. Seems to be a stupid business decision. Stay in your lane and don’t throw millions after customers you won’t win anyways.
 
I was sad when they left Canada. I walk to work and there was a red box right on the way home. I could rent a blu-ray for $1.99, have friends over and watch it the same night, then return it the next morning on my way back from work. Hard to beat that.
 
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