Personally a little sad over this. Have a bluray player and sometimes I want to be able to choose and pick a newer movie in 4k... Much cheaper than Amazon and Vudu to rent.
Blu-ray also has much higher quality than streaming services.
In fact, the only way to stream a movie in Blu-ray quality is by using something like Real Debrid, with a fast connection since the bitrate can reach ~100Mbps at times. There's no legally licensed way to do it. Seems like a missed opportunity IMO.
I'm genuinely curios. As somone who basically just watches 1080p can you really tell a difference? I feel like my tv and eyes are just limited.
Even when I'm at Costco looking at the 10k ultra super duper HD footage... It just looks good. I wouid be hard pressed to really tell a difference from home when there's usually filters on movies so they never look super ultra sharp anyway.
Understood. I honestly don't know many alternatives to Redbox besides those for renting movies... Even then, as others have mentioned, there's a difference between streaming and playing a blu ray. All movies I rent are <$2.50 from Redbox, nicer quality vs. >$5 Amazon.
Wealthy people also use it. I'm relatively well-off (not rich, but above average), and I love Redbox and was planning to use it more often now that streaming platforms are screwing everything up. I hate ads, and every streaming platform seems intent on shoving ads in my face.
No, in this capitalist world what will happen is that your account number becomes an asset during bankruptcy and they would sell that to some credit recovery agent who would sue you for some bullshit amount of money
Don't you have to enter a credit card before it gives you the disc? I imagine they will just charge you later though maybe it'll slio through the cracks.
I doubt it'd slip through the cracks... The late fines are fully automated. The advertised price is a daily rental rate. For every day you have the item, you get charged that amount. Once you hit the maximum amount, it stops charging you and you can keep it (at that point, you've paid the full price of a new movie or game, but just own a second-hand one...)
I was just at a store last week and they had a sign on the machine saying you can't use it and it's going away. I wonder what they'll do with all those discs.
"over 600", considering how much shelf space it would take, to store 600+ movies in their covers; a redbox is probably a very space efficient way to store and resource optical media.
yeah I'd love to get my hands on one of these and just keep it in the Livingroom then. Put all the blurays in it. Let people borrow disks...
would be a cool project to replace their (more than likely) proprietary GUI with a custom one... I have RFID cards on hand. Could be cool to just assign cards to friends and let them come over and "rent" movies.
Make a "secret" menu for "renting" out Linux install disks to myself too. Forces me to keep shit organized.
The issue here isn't with the core idea Redbox is going for, the problem is rights holders not allowing interesting uses of their media.
I'd really like to see something like Redbox pivot into something with a much bigger catalogue and much lower operating costs. The kiosks could provide USB/HDMI dongles where pretty much any media can be loaded and displayed on a TV for a consistent price. That way they could offer a much larger catalog, don't need to have someone physically move disks around, and the kiosks can be smaller since they don't need a bank of DVDs and Blurays. They could have a digital distribution platform to complement it, where you can stream everything instead of going to a kiosk. And you don't need any special equipment, pretty much everything has a USB or HDMI dongle.
Just think of going to a drive-thru and getting a dongle with your meal so you can watch a show with your fast food dinner. The only real logistics here is rebalancing the supply of these dongles, but that's much simpler than restocking DVDs/Blurays. These dongles can also be incredibly cheap, probably something like $1-2 at scale, and they could be reused dozens if not hundreds of times. They could even partner with libraries to digitize their library so patrons don't need to have a DVD/Bluray player to watch stuff.
But no, we can't have nice things. I'm pushing back by cancelling my streaming services and going back to ripping DVDs/Blurays. I have nearly finished digitizing my collection of disks, and I'm going to be buying and ripping physical media going forward. Screw this slow march toward "you will own nothing and be happy" nonsense.
It's possible, but with copy protections, it's incredibly unlikely. You'd run an app on your computer or TV to decrypt and view the media, just like you do with Netflix or whatever.
A judge overseeing Redbox owner Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment’s bankruptcy case granted a request Wednesday to convert it from Chapter 11 to Chapter 7 bankruptcy, according to Lowpass’ Janko Roettgers and The Wall Street Journal.
The company’s lawyers said Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment will lay off its remaining 1,000 employees and liquidate the businesses, including streaming operations and the 24,000 or so disc kiosks that have rented out DVDs, Blu-rays, and videogames for years.
Given the fact that there may also be at least the possibility of misappropriation of funds that were held in trust for employees, there is more than ample reason why this case should be converted.”
In addition to operating Redbox, Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment also manages brands like Crackle and Screen Media.
Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment.
Roettgers has been covering Redbox and its parent company’s recent troubles for The Verge, including a missed multimillion-dollar payment owed to NBCUniversal, the original bankruptcy filing, and Chicken Soup failing to make payroll for Redbox employees.
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I hope of I were to get a pre-paid card and use that on a Redbox before they close them down that I could get away with getting free DVDs/Blu-ray, assuming that there's anything good in them and that nobody comes after me for that.