Redbox, the company that operates DVD rental vending machine across the US, reported a decline in sales, according to the fourth quarter financial report by it’s parent company Coinstar (CSTR).
The company cited several reasons for the lower sales numbers, with the most prominently discussed reason being the new stipulation from movie studios to delay Redbox rentals of new DVDs until 28 days after they’ve been released. Essentially, this means when a new movie gets released to DVD, you can buy it through retail stores, but you cannot rent it for almost a month.
Also mentioned in the financial report as reasons people weren’t renting as many movies from Redbox, was because the movies they wanted were unavailable due to people returning popular DVDs to a different kiosks than they originally got the movie from.
The only thing that was missing from the report was the looming competition from streaming media, which has no doubt taken a huge bite out of their customer base. Netflix has some of the same 28-day rental restrictions as Redbox, but their subscription base (as well as their stock price) is on the up.
How are you watching movies in 2011?
[Source: The Seattle Times]
I have been using red box more since they added bluray’s.
Comment by Ryan — January 19, 2011 @ 10:34 am
The reason that RedBox is on the decline mostly stems from renting a movie that is extremely horribly scratched because the last person to view it let their 3 year old use the DVD as a flying disc for their GI Joes and then decided to get the grime off the stove with the disc before returning it to the RedBox.
Comment by Negacrowbar — January 19, 2011 @ 10:56 pm
With the new Netflix rates forthcoming, I just tried Red Box for the first time. The movie I wanted was readily available and the disc was in pristine condition. I will probably switch to Red Box for DVD’s and have not decided on whether I’ll stay with the Netflix streaming. Tired of the greed!
Comment by Richard Hesting — July 17, 2011 @ 11:01 pm