Resurrecting an old thread here. Redbox has finally come to my area, located in Albertson's grocery stores, but I never shop at Albertson's.
There is a Redbox competitor called The New Release (
www.thenewrelease.com) which I noticed at my local Ralph's grocery store, and I finally tried it for the first time this past weekend. $1/day for rentals, and the first rental was free.
I figured I had nothing to lose, so I tried it. Selection actually looks pretty good, movie titles going back 6-7 months. Some of the new releases were out of stock, obviously. About 20-25 pages of selections, with about 10 movies per page, so about 200-250 movies to choose from, far more than I was expecting.
Picked up Yellow, the Roselyn Sanchez dancer/stripper movie. Swiped my credit card through, and then the disc popped out of the machine. It actually took about 60-90 seconds for the disc to come out, so there are some mechanical parts moving around inside this rental kiosk. Disc comes out in a thin rectagular, but strong heavy plastic, container.
Therie aren't any distinct markings on the black plastic contaner which housed the disc, so I was curious as to how the disc would be identified when I returned it. Only the movie disc had an added sticker near the center spindle hole that may have been used for the kiosk machine to identify the disc. I didn't have to reswipe my credit card again when I returned it.
Very cool machine, I may be using this more often in the future, as there is a certain convenience factor of it being located where I regularly shop. And $1/day for a rental is hard to beat. Cheapest mom-and-pop rental shop is $2/day.
I remember seeing another rental-type kiosk at my local Vons grocery store. Don't remember if it was The New Release or Redbox or something else. I'll take a closer look next time I shop there.