RIP Redbox, a Bad Idea at the Worst Time

That seems a bit harsh. I don’t see how it was a bad idea. It lasted over 2 decades and was a nice option for people who didn’t want or couldn’t afford a subscription service, but wanted to rent the occasional movie… and/or those without good broadband. Every time I went to the store I saw people at the Redbox machine.

Once physical media dies and subscriptions are the only option, I think we’ll realize we screwed up and how good we once had it.

out-of-touch author that has probably never used redbox, or never understood it.

If your time means nothing, streaming. otherwise

- redbox had a good selection of current movies

- you had to decide in a short amount of time

- you had to watch specific movies in a dedicated time

- the movies were associated with getting out of the house

redbox was good for families. You could go to the grocery store and let your kid choose what movie they wanted to rent. Kids don't have that many choices in an adult world. They got a physical disk they had to play themselves, and when it was returned it was gone.

For couples, they could browse together and take a movie, maybe two home.

I think netflix/streaming is sort of the opposite. Unbounded time picking a movie, so an endless search for something not-as-terrible, sometimes not even coming up with something to watch. Quickly finishing anything decent (fewer new movies than redbox), then vast quantities of wasted time watching not-decent content.

For a long time, a BD-rental was only $1.50. Even today, Blu-rays are obviously higher quality than streaming content because there's just so much more data on them.

The convenience of streaming is hard to beat, but the quality and price of disk rentals would have been competitive if the studios didn't muscle their way into the streaming business so destructively.

Ultimately I think Redbox COULD have been fine if only it had better access to new releases. People blame their pivot into streaming, but at that point the studios had already killed them and the company was flailing.

Redbox had a lot going against it timing wise. Movies as a format were dying, consumers switching to streaming, pandemic reducing traffic, and the shitty deals they made to delay new releases and consumers going away from disc players in general.

What really killed it was the attempt to do a streaming service. That was a suicidal desperation move that killed Redbox 5-10 year’s early. They could have limped on for quite a bit longer without that.