Frankly, I’m surprised it’s taken this long for such a thing to transpire. I think it’s safe to say that most of us have seen vending machines spewing out electronics at airports and other random establishments for some time, so this bit of news should come as no surprise.
Across the pond in the UK, Stuff.tv has the HAWT exclusive on Sony and Universal’s joint venture spread PoP entertainment vending machines full of Sony PS3 games and Blu-ray discs and DVDs. You can even download media directly to your PMP or SD card. That part is pretty cool, actually.
An exact date wasn’t announced, but they’ll be popping up at movie theaters, airports/train stations/bus stations, gyms, college campuses, etc. very soon. Check out Stuff.tv’s video here.
Will they be keeping a specific inventory of what people are buying? Something I think Redbox should have done, and this could too, would be to create the DVD right at the machine. This way you can reduce the amount of inventory you need – someone would just have to come and place blank DVD’s in the machine for it to work. If every airport and mall has a starbucks, you could even work out a deal for some employee to take out 10 minutes and restock blank DVD’s in the machine, how’s that for scaling?
This does create the issue of people not wanting to wait for a DVD to burn, and so my recommendation for that is to have the machine keep 1 of each item ready for dispensing. Maybe if something is popular enough that people are lined up for it, you can create more in advance, but the basic concept is to burn the DVD and slap the label on it at the machine.