Redbox’s disc rentals are over

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.

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.
- 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.
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.
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!!

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.

Dedbox

I think I'll take one home.

I wonder if you can install Linux on it?
- I'll make it dispense AOL CDs from the 90s
- Seems like it could be converted to a vending machine pretty easily if you could add your own OS
  
  Already has security, waterproofing, payment processing stuff, and a screen to choose your item.
- I was talking to one of the repair guys working on one near me and he told me they already ran Linux, so they're one step ahead of you

Ok hear me out, we rent all the media before they disappear. Then once the redbox disappears, there's nowhere to return the disks.

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
That's pretty much what Netflix did.

I should see if I can find some working ones tomorrow and take out a few games and see what happens if I never return them lmao

Don't you have to enter a credit card before it gives you the disc? I imagine they will just charge you later though maybe it'll slio through the cracks.
- I doubt it'd slip through the cracks... The late fines are fully automated. The advertised price is a daily rental rate. For every day you have the item, you get charged that amount. Once you hit the maximum amount, it stops charging you and you can keep it (at that point, you've paid the full price of a new movie or game, but just own a second-hand one...)
- It could potentially work out like netflix letting users keep the discs they had.

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.

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, the Chicken Soup people own Redbox? Has that always been true?

RedBox was originally developed by McDonalds.

I remember being able to rent video games from these. Some days you might see 2 people in line for one of these things.

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.
- To be fair you could do that with blurays and DVD's.

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!

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...

My redbox app already stopped working

I will not mind walking past the boxes anymore.

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.