Hybrid Model: Redbox

Back when Netflix split their services (stupidly but, perhaps, necessarily), my wife and I decided we would stick with just streaming. The kids could be…mercurial in their entertainment desires and Netflix streaming offered quite a lot of acceptable kids programming that would be instantly available. Since then, however, our own movie-watching has fallen off dramatically, in no small part because, well, the less said about Netflix streaming’s offering of new titles the better. We get why it is, but still… disappointing is a gentle description.

And then we discovered Redbox. Okay, so, it had been around for a while, but it seemed like a hassle and when we could get movies sent to us by Netflix, it seemed a bit redundant and inconvenient. Until we stopped getting movies in the mail.

About six months ago we reinstated “date night” at home, and once we were caught up on all of our TV shows, we started to rent movies from Redbox. Why? It’s so freaking convenient! And hassle-free! The only thing that would be more convenient would be getting everything streaming in our home for a nice flat monthly fee, but eh, this is the world we live in. I could try to rent pay-per-view on demand from Amazon or Apple or Charter or something, but they’re not as cheap as Redbox, and I’d rather not risk service interruptions or hiccups for something a) I’ve set time aside for specially and b) I may need to rent again if I want to finish it because my internet died or something.

So we use Redbox. There’s one on my way home from work, and there’s one inside our grocery store. In theory, it’s as easy reserving the movie online, stopping to pick it up on the way home, and dropping it off when I go grocery shopping Saturday. Sometimes we forget and hang onto a movie much longer than we need to, but in terms of dollars spent versus entertainment received, it’s no worse than getting something from Netflix and letting it sit on the coffee table for two months unwatched before sending it back. And we’re actually watching movies again, which has been kind of nice.

Mirrored from Bum Scoop.