Let's face it, a by-product of the explosive growth in technology over the past decade is the myriad of choices when it comes to acquiring media for entertainment purposes. These choices are filtered by our willingness to pay, and how quickly we want to acquire the content. At any time, if I want to enjoy some video content of my choosing and want to see it now, I can rent a pay-per-view movie from my satellite provider, download (or rent) it from iTunes or Amazon Unbox, or if the dark side were to beckon (which, of course, it never does) I could potentially "find" a movie elsewhere on the web.
We don't watch a ton of feature-length movies in our house, but when we do they seem to be in clusters - during school and work vacations, family visits and cold winter weekends. If we consumed content on a more regular basis, we would use the rent-by-mail service from Netflix. The unparalleled selection works great for our family, whose taste vary significantly. The only problem is managing the rental list and waiting for the DVD to arrive in our mailbox.
As someone who fancys himself as a geek of a fairly high order, it pains me greatly to say this, but yes, I do actually visit Blockbuster on a fairly regular basis. Before you make a call to get my nerd card revoked, please understand that our ad hoc viewing schedule, combined with our family's taste in obscure titles (confession: yes, these are sometimes decades old Mary Kate & Ashley movies) makes it a logical step. If we are having a kid sleepover at our house, the pre-teens that infest our place want to pick out their own titles.
It's that same spur-of-the-moment viewing opportunity that introduced me to a service called Redbox. If you're not familiar with them, they have ATM-style DVD rental kiosks that they locate in supermarkets, big-box department stores and (where my experiences occur) at drugstores like Walgreens (that seem to be popping up like mushrooms around here).
The Redbox user experience has almost Apple-like simplicity. They offer a few dozen new- to recent-release titles; you can rent them immediately from the kiosk (for only a buck a night), or as I have done you can pre-reserve titles via their web page, which can point you to locations where your selection is in-stock. They also sell the DVDs from the kiosk in "pre-viewed" form for a mere $7. Many of the Redbox kiosk locations are even located outside these retail stores, so the retailer doesn't even have to be open for you to rent there.
Last night on the way back from dinner my wife decided that she wanted to watch The Other Boleyn Girl (again) with her Mom. We were nowhere near a Blockbuster, we didn't know if it was available on pay-per-view, and didn't want to buy the movie. I logged in to my Redbox account in my iPhone (their site renders nicely on mobile Safari, even if it isn't optimized for it), found the title in two clicks, reserved it in a couple more, and was directed to a Walgreens a few blocks away. I parked at the door, ran in, swiped my card (for authentication) and the kiosk burped out the DVD. Bingo. After a quick stop for ice cream we were watching Natalie stab Scarlett in the back in all their splendor. I returned it this morning on the way to work - cost: $1, easy factor: 9.5.
It's quite the accomplishment for a company to introduce into our connected media-on-demand world a brick-and-mortar DVD rental model that works so well, but Rebox has done just that. They clearly understand that consumers like me frequent these retailers for the package of paper towels on the way home from work, or the late-night prescription for the winter sniffles. Don't get me wrong, I am still way bullish about my other on-demand choices, but this company has found a way to shoehorn its way into our life through simplicity, web integration and a wide location footprint. I hope they do well.
