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.
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.
that wouldn’t stop someone from dropping a “media player” on the drive with your logo on it that’s actually malware. People unfamiliar with how it’s supposed to work would plug that in and run it without even thinking about it. I guess you could have the machine format the drive every time it comes back and have it test for counterfeits to prevent that though now that I think about it more.
I guess you could have the machine format the drive every time it comes back
Yup, that’s the plan. You turn it in, it reimages it to whatever the next customer is likely to need, and if a customer asks for something out of left-field, it would reflash and take a bit longer.
Flashing on return is essential because it checks whether the returned item is still in working order, so it really wouldn’t be an issue.
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
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.
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.
The one thing that was strange was that gamestop almost always broke disks in half before throwing them out.
I think this is a common method to disincentivize people from taking stuff. Many moons ago I worked at Walmart and they did the same stuff in the claims area. They would damage everything to make it worthless and then either toss it in the trash compactor or send it back to the manufacturer. They damaged it to male sure that it couldn’t be sold again and to somewhat prevent people from using this as a method to ‘launder’ good items that they’d come back later to take home.
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.
It depends how close you sit to your TV and how large the TV is. I can tell a difference if I’m close enough or if the screen is large enough. As well, try turning on a streamed 1080p show and using a 4k bluray (if you have all of thrsr things). When you stand close (like, closer than you’d watch), you can really see the difference. As you back away, it becomes less noticeable, but even at comfortable viewing distances people can see the difference
You can see an example on your phone. Try watching a video in 1080p and then 480p. You should notice a difference, even if you hold your phone a foot from your face it’s the same idea when watching on a tv.
HDR vs no HDR makes a big difference in colours to me. And if you compare compressed low Bitrate footage vs higher Bitrate there will often be artifacts or color banding, particularly in darker scenes or wherever you have gradients.
It ofc also depends on what device you are watching it on. But I would say that yes if you have a movie (made up example) that is compressed to 5gb total size vs 25gb vs 70gb for the uncompressed Blu-ray quality, then the first jump will be a very noticeable difference assuming you have capable hardware. Whereas the second one will be much much less noticeable and also come with other drawbacks that need to weighted off, e.g. storage requirements.
Blu-rays are compressed too, they’re just less compressed. Uncompressed 4K at 24fps is around 4.7Gbps (around 600MB/s) so 70GB would only be around two minutes of video.
What they meant is that the Blu Ray rips aren’t recompressed again. You can download a 1:1 copy and the quality will be identical to what’s on the disc.
Open up this webpage on your TV (or whatever display you use to consume media) and watch the moving line. If you can notice aliasing at your normal seating distance (I.e. the “jaggies”), then you would benefit from a higher resolution display. Otherwise I wouldn’t worry about it.
For a game you can tell. For a movie, it’s honestly pretty hard. The biggest difference with most 4K media is the HDR which I do appreciate a lot more than extra pixels.
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.
Only other place I can think of off-hand is the local library for rentals. Half Price Books and thrift shops will have some for sale, but I’m not sure how much lower they may be from Amazon’s rental fee.
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…)