DVD Vending Machines Arrive in Europe

The Redbox DVD rental kiosk has been hugely successful in the States. The units are installed in over 19,000 locations and more than 350 million movies were rented from them in 2009. The process is relatively quick. You use a touch screen to select the film, insert your credit card, and the machine uses internal robotics to dispense the DVD. You can return the DVD to any Redbox location, and, if you’re an iPhone user, you can rent DVDs from your phone and tell the system which Redbox kiosk you want to pick it up from. In addition to a selection of the most popular DVDs, most of the machines also carry Blu-ray disks and Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and Nintendo Wii games. Rental store giant Blockbuster has risen to the challenge by launching its own kiosks in the US. And now the concept has arrived in the UK. Movie Booth is a newly created brand that supplies Redbox-style kiosks to retail stores in UK and Ireland. So far, they have installed two dozen or so machines in some Tesco, Spar, Budgens and other stores. But all of these systems offer a very limited range of titles, so they will be of little interest to movie buffs or to those looking for a classic movie from the past or something slightly obscure.

This limitation can be addressed by burning DVDs on demand or by downloading titles onto USB drives or memory sticks. The obstacle to this has been (up to now) slow download speeds. Customers do not want to wait long to get their rental movie. But a new video-rental kiosk that allows consumers to download films, TV programmes and games is about to be released in the States. The MK3 DVD+Digital kiosk, developed by Californian firms Symwave and XONA Media, will utilise advanced USB 3.0 technology to achieve faster transfers and make the purchasing process fast and simple. They promise that the entire transaction will take less time than getting cash from an ATM.

Another advantage of the download approach is that the titles are automatically deleted after viewing, thus saving the customer the return trip to a kiosk. It remains to be seen whether enough people feel comfortable yet about using USB devices in this way. The success of RedBox shows that DVDs are still the media preferred by the masses. We suspect that we’ll see a wave of DVD rental kiosks sweep Europe before download kiosks gain mass-market acceptance.

Nevertheless, NeoProducts has already developed a prototype kiosk that burns DVDs on demand, and we stand ready to play a leading role in the rollout of digital download kiosks.