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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.
Allowing people to take rewritable media home and return it sounds like it would open the door for malware.
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.
The USB port of the machine is also an attack vector.
- Infect the machine and reprogram it to infect every drive being flashed
- Hacked media would install Bitcoin miners on the victim’s “smart” TV
- ???
- Profit
Eh, I suppose, but they could design the USB drive really hard to infect. The more narrow your use-case, the more options you have to secure it.
They could even limit it to just HDMI, which would probably be a lot harder to attack since HDMI doesn’t support much besides audio and video.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
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.
The original article contains 240 words, the summary contains 181 words. Saved 25%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Quick! Everybody run to redbox, and rent EVERYTHING.
Not like you have to return disks to a service and box thats no longer fuctional!
Yep…I see no flaws in this plan! Just a smart guy doing smart things!
Hey…we should build a monorail to the moon!!! And then brag about our redbox gains!!!
Redbox Gains. That sounds a lot like my failed thrash ambient band.
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.
Before the pandemic, I used to watch a youtube channel of this guy who would dumpster dive gamestop.
He got so excited over finding what was in most cases trash.
Things like manuals, without a case or a game. Things like boxes for headphones, with no headphones.
Occasionally he’d find something decent…but never worth dumpster diving every night for.
The one thing that was strange was that gamestop almost always broke disks in half before throwing them out.
So I imagine thats what redbox will do.
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.
I remember being able to rent video games from these. Some days you might see 2 people in line for one of these things.
I wonder how many discs one machine holds? Might replace a bunch of bookshelves…
This is what the inside of a Redbox kiosk looks like:
Looking forward to seeing this on Technology Connections. Seems right up his alley.
But knowing his timeframe of products, it’ll probably be 20 years from now…
If you could make this thing dispense drip coffee, he’d be all over it
Or wash dishes.
Depends on whether you can use it to wash dishes or store heat energy.
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.
Much cheaper than Amazon and Vudu to rent.
True, but you just named two major parties pushing for Redbox’s death.
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.
🏴☠️
Ah hoy! Just did a quick search. Seems the quality has significantly increased there too!
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.
Your local library would appreciate it if you go ahead and check out some movies now and then. It helps them prove that they are worth funding.
Thank you! I remember my local library had dvds. I don’t remember any BluRays. Will check it out!!
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.
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.
vs 70gb for the uncompressed Blu-ray
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.
Oh! Yeah, that makes sense.
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.
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.
Yes! Finally! Someone other than me likes Real-Debrid!
So much better than a torrent client, since there’s no waiting for seeds. Direct downloads of any torrent at up to 1Gbps.
Pair it with a media center app like Stremio or Plex and you won’t even miss Blu Ray and overpriced steaming apps. R-D is well worth the $3/mo.
My redbox app already stopped working
I kind of want one of these to load up with my discs to just be a fancy frontend to pick out a movie for the night…
Anyone know how many discs these things hold? Gotta be a few hundred no?
“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.
Wait, they still existed to this day? That’s impressive.
Literally last week my wife noticed one while out and remarked “I can’t believe they’re still around.”
I just sent the article to her with the caption “You did this!”
Um, yes? They’re literally in every grocery store and pharmacy, right next to the lottery machine.
Not an American. I just remember them from the South Park episode that made fun of them and Blockbusters in 2012.
Wait, the Chicken Soup people own Redbox? Has that always been true?
RedBox was originally developed by McDonalds.
Lots of poor people used Redbox.
At least poor people still have the public library.
For now.
Yarr.
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 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.
I will not mind walking past the boxes anymore.
Had good memories with this ngl
Ok hear me out, we rent all the media before they disappear. Then once the redbox disappears, there’s nowhere to return the disks.
That’s pretty much what Netflix did.
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
