I’m not quite sold on this idea but I thought I’d see what everyone else thinks. There’s a company in Ireland called PortoMedia that’s developed movie kiosks.
These kiosks will be found in four unknown US test cities in the near future (please let me know if you see one) and they’ll hold approximately 350 to 5,000 movies, each of which can be downloaded to a memory card in under a minute. You can watch the movies on a $60 TV box that you buy from PortoMedia (it comes with six free movies) or you can watch them on your PC and/or transfer them to a portable device like an iPod.
The whole idea is that, according to the company, movies take too long to download over the internet. This method would also supposedly cut the costs associated with packaging and shipping DVDs. You could also either rent or buy the movies and these kiosks could be seen everywhere from movie rental places (so they can offer thousands and thousands of movies) to convenience stores.
I’m not entirely sold on the system for the following reasons.
1. You still have to go somewhere to get the movies. The time it takes to go to the nearest store could very easily take longer than it would to download an entire movie over the internet, although what Nicholas just posted might prove that there is such a market for this kind of system.
2. You have to buy proprietary equipment that serves no other purpose than to watch these movies. Why not buy AppleTV, SanDisk’s Take TV, or something similar?
3. I could see this working for people who don’t have high-speed internet access at home but are the kinds of people who don’t have high-speed internet the same people who are gonna be savvy enough to rent or buy memory-card movies from a machine? They’ll likely be the same people who still go to the store and rent movies the old fashioned way.
Would any of you guys use this system or can you think of a market where this would work? I guess I’m just wondering who PortoMedia is targeting here.
The whole memory card thing is weird. Over here we have DVD renting machines in some towns which are quite a success because unlike normal movie rental places they are allowed to operate 24/7. But memory cards? People who know how to use those will know how to get their movies in a different way.
I would do it, I use my 46″ Samsung LCD as a monitor anyway, but content anymore S T I N K S, I think there is maybe one more movie I will rent this year so far, and it’s so average I can’t even remember it’s name.
Hey all you Haxx0rs, this thing sounds kinda cool. Minus that it is pretty much dumb. But whatev, if it costs like cheap for a movie then I down w/ it.
I would us this – but older people will never go for it, I tried to get my mom to rent from a Redbox and it was a damn mess – she could not read the screen – she kept pressing the wrong buttons – finally I told her to step back and I did it all in about 10 seconds. Now imagine that on top of the memory card to set top box process and you have the makings of a nightmare. Plus, I like that I can rent from Redbox for free (yeah rental codes) and could take the discs home and “back them up” (not that I do that just saying you could).
I’d go for it. I think it’d work on a college campus, since people who’d be willing to pay for movies (rare as they may be, the recent round of people getting letters from certain lawyers has scared a good number into keeping clean, since our IPs aren’t dynamic) would want to be able to go and get them at any hour of day. Have it so you can just split the cost of a few bucks with some friends and I could definitely see this working, hell, it’d be cheaper than a movie theater. And $60 bucks is cheaper than an Apple TV. A little “inconvenient” maybe, relative to an Apple TV, to have to walk somewhere to get the movie, but I know plenty of people who’d rather save money. *shrug*
I think if something like this is going to happen, it will be done by Redbox. By the end of this year, they will already have over 11,000 locations in the US alone.
The Redbox kiosk, while needing some improvement, would be able to be retrofitted with necessary ports quite easily. Assuming Redbox is smart, they could easily own this space. Time will tell.
You can read more about Redbox (and the free promo codes mentioned above) at http://www.insideredbox.com
PS: I think ‘made-to-order’ DVDs will take off before using usb memory for this, though. Just imagine going online and choosing your movie from a catalog of thousands to tens of thousands, and then going to a very nearby kiosk to pick it up at your convenience. Maybe not perfect for the ‘geeks’, but for the average joe, I think it would be a hit.