RedBox: A Good Alternative To Netflix

I just cancelled my Netflix subscription. I have found RedBox to be much better, more cheaper, and a great service for renting out DVD movies and games.

For nearly five years I was a loyal Netflix user having signed up for their 2 DVDs at a time rental plan for $14.99/month. In the beginning, I would order two at a time and watch movies to my hearts content. Imagine how thrilled I was to watch seasons of Keifer Sutherland's 24!

Life was good. I was like a caveman having found the new big thing! Munching on bags of popcorn, emptying bottles of Coca Cola, and being a couch potato. Movie after movie after movie.

I would try to keep the downtime to a minimum. I would go to Netflix.com, add one episode of 24 to the queue while I had another sitting in front of me. After I watched that episode, I would head to the site to add another to the queue.

This went on and on - until I got sick of watching stuff.

Late last year, I noticed my DVD rental usage started to decline. Life got real busy and I found myself spending more time online, watching my favorite sports teams, and working on personal projects. There were stretches when I didn't even bother watching any movies at all. Month after month the queue was empty and even when it wasn't, there were Netflix DVDs lying on the family room table unopened. Total waste!

Every now and then I would jump onto Netflix and look for a new movie. Every time I would find nothing but crap. Yes, crap movies is what all is coming out today. Some with so much techno pyro and dazzling hi tech effects its just gotten to be so mind numbing that it truly is too much to take in. Whatever happened to movies with a great storyline, that had something of meaning to take away from when you left the movie theatre?

Now I know about NetFlix online streaming. At first, I was excited to know that I could watch movies from their archive right on my PC. But one look at the selections, I wasn't impressed. Boring! C grade movies and old one's at that. This is what I am paying for? What a waste.

Not only that, but far too many times I couldn't enjoy online movies streamed from Netflix. They were way too jittery and taking too long to download and buffer. To be fair though, I suppose this could be due to using a wireless connection but given my PC is located so far away from my router, using a wired connection is out of the question. I ran SpeedTest across several servers located across the US and I came up with good throughput. And I rarely have any problems watching YouTube videos.

So I figured this poor performance problem could be due to Netflix servers and their content distribution partners. But whatever, it didn't work well for me. Having racked up several months of Netflix bills without a single rental, I decided to cancel my subscription.

Then just the other day, I happened to stop off at my local 7-Eleven for a Slurpee. Located just outside was a big RedBox kiosk. For $1 a day, you can rent a DVD movie. Are you kidding me? Not only that, but they had a good selection of Blu-Ray and video games too.

But what if the movie you want isn't in stock at the kiosk? In that case, if you go to redbox.com and create an account, you can reserve a movie online and have it ready to be picked up. This is convenient, in that no longer do you have to drive over to a kiosk to figure out if a movie is available. You can check for it online. Each kiosk is connected wirelessly to the Internet and reports its inventory and sales transactions to RedBox.

At redbox.com, simply login, search for the movie you want, and click the Find button. Up will come a list of all the kiosks located in your immediate area, Enter in your credit card information and check out to reserve the title. Then, drive over to that location and press the "Online Reservation Pickup" button. Swipe your credit card and the movie is dispensed to you.

How cool is that?

Oh sure, the postman won't deliver it to you and you do have to get in the car to drive. But you will be able to get your movie now, at a cheaper price to take home. Today, with all the video movie rental places going under, do you really have another choice?.

RedBox was started back in 2003 and was initially funded by McDonald's. In 2009, Coinstar bought out the company for around $180 million. RedBox has over 30,000 kiosks nationwide and if you need to find the nearest one, just punch it up on the RedBox kiosk locator.

Today, while dropping off my DVD, I happened to talk to a representative at RedBox who told me a little about the company and showed me parts of the kiosk. It was an interesting experience, seeing what components were inside of it and how it operated. Each kiosk has a turnstyle that holds up to 630 products. A mechanical arm moves up and down the turnstyle to grab a product out of a slot. An onboard computer running Microsoft Windows handles inventory management, and administration. Communication is done wirelessly. The kiosk is meticulously built to prevent vandalism and credit card theft.

The low $1 price is due to cutting brick and mortar overhead as well employee count. Representatives handle each geographic area servicing the kiosks. The take per each kiosk varies depending on season, movie availability, etc. but each unit could take in 50-100 rentals a day.

Earlier this year, RedBox announced that they would not make new movies available until it had been on sale for at least a month. There are plans on a subscription streaming service which would directly compete with Amazon, Walmart, Netflix, and Hulu. Although I doubt I will be renting out many movies as I did in my Netflix days, I couldn't be more happier with their price and service.

RedBox is a good alternative for those who just want to watch a movie every now and then. If that's your situation, why get locked into a recurring monthly subscription plan that you really won't use?.

About Kerry Kobashi

Kerry is the founder of KerryOnWorld. He lives in Silicon Valley and has worked as an engineer and project manager. He owns Kobashi Computing a consulting company.