Written by Chris Albrecht
Posted Saturday, May 31, 2008 at 10:39 PM PT

Blockbuster Kiosks: Missed it By That Much

Last month I suggested that Blockbuster buy Redbox to help usher brick-and-mortar DVD renters into their digital future through automated kiosks. While they didn’t buy Redbox, this week Blockbuster announced plans to roll out…kiosks! But the big boxes will only be used to download content to digital media players. Shoot! So close!

With Redbox eyeing an IPO, Blockbuster buying them was probably out of the question. And while I stand by my original kiosk idea, I don’t think Blockbuster’s version is going to work.

Blockbuster’s idea is to have you bring your portable media device to the store and fill it up with content (let’s set aside the fact that the kiosks won’t work with the ubiquitous iPods for right now). Rather than forcing people to bring a portable media player back and forth, the kiosks should have had an option to just beam the movie back home to a set-top box.

The kiosks were never meant to be the endgame, but the method was meant to provide people attached to shiny discs a comfortable way to move into digital downloads in an environment with which they were already familiar.

Now I just need to write a post predicting that I’ll get a million dollars…

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Topic: Hardware

Comments (2)

I predict you won’t lose a million dollars. I can’t say the same for BB. It’s way short of what’s needed for success: eg a product/price that will get folks in their car and down to the store. We’ll see.

Drew Robertson — 4:25 PM on June 2, 2008 Reply
Movie Retailers needs to use this kiosk technology if they want to stay in the game. They need to be more innovative and stop following everyone else. I found this site, but I have never seen the machine. Check it out.

http://www.ondemandrentalkiosk.com

Mike — 11:31 PM on July 14, 2008 Reply

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