Redbox Plans To Go Streaming Next Year

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Now here’s an out of left field shocker for you, folks: seems the folks out at Redbox, who may well have killed Movie Gallery and Hollywood Video by offering the DVDs that they both offered but at vastly reduced prices, have an eye on getting into the streaming video market, and will do so sometime next year.

Redbox will be working with an as-yet-unnamed partner to get its streaming service launched, which many actually saw coming starting back last April, when Redbox released a customer service survey asking people if they’d be willing to pay $3.95 a month for an all-you-can-stream buffet of movies, to which, no doubt, people with internet services that don’t impose usage caps or have a “fair access policy” (otherwise known as a “we reserve the right to strangle your internet if you actually use the services you’re paying for” policy by disgruntled users) are jumping up and down and frantically shrieking “yippee!” before they say “yes, we’d love such a service”.

Although Coinstar, Redbox’s parent company, was quick to caution that it’s entirely too early to speculate on details (like whether they’d actually offer the all-you-can-stream buffet), it’s a safe bet that that will at least be an option.

Frankly, I think Redbox will have some serious problems here. Redbox spent most of a year in a running battle with most every major studio in Hollywood over release dates and pricing, which came to a head when, as word was, Redbox was actually buying DVDs at retail to stock their kiosks because the studios refused to sell to Redbox in any quantity, fearing that Redbox’s prices devalued their own product. And since Redbox’s primary competition in this arena is either massively capitalized (Blockbuster Video) or has a huge head start (Netflix), Redbox will be hard pressed to keep up. That having been said, not even Redbox expects to cut the DVDs out of the loop any time soon, so you don’t need to worry if your net access can’t keep up with Redbox’s plans.