Redbox's $1.50 Blu-ray rentals in 13,000-plus kiosks now, across the US by fall

Redbox, the company behind those now-ubiquitous $1 movie-rental kiosks, has finally announced its plans for Blu-ray rentals. The company is rolling out $1.50 Blu-ray rentals to 13,300 kiosks over the next few months, and it plans to offer them at all of its 26,000  kiosks across the US by fall.

Redbox’s initial Blu-ray titles include “The Book of Eli”, “Green Zone”, and “Brooklyn’s Finest.” As always with Redbox, the selection will differ depending on the kiosk, and new movies are added weekly. The company has created a new section of its site for customers to check for Blu-ray capable-kiosks near them.

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Currently, there are no Blu-ray kiosks at my Brooklyn area code, but then again there aren’t many Redbox kiosks near me in general. It could just be that many of Redbox’s kiosks aren’t yet reporting their Blu-ray availability properly.

Redbox will still delay new releases from Warner, Fox, and Universal by 28 days — just like DVDs. Redbox struck these deals to guarantee supply in exchange for giving the studios a four-week window to sell DVDs at full price at retail outlets. Netflix, the DVD-by-mail company, struck similar deals.

In a keynote speech at the Entertainment Supply Chain Academy Edge conference in June, Redbox president Mitch Lowe said that 16.9 percent of its customers owned Blu-ray players, reports Home Media Magazine. He believes that the company’s 23 percent slice of the rental market will help overall Blu-ray adoption. The company recently surpassed 750 million total rentals, and currently rents nearly 40 million DVDs every month. Lowe also mentioned that the company plans to eventually offer disc purchasing through its kiosks for $5, $7, and $9.

Blockbuster’s rental kiosks that compete with Redbox, dubbed Blockbuster Express, currently only offer Blu-ray discs in a handful of locations.

Now that Redbox is offering high-definition films in its kiosks, Netflix has yet another reason to fear the rental company — which caters to impulse movie-watching decisions far better than Netflix’s discs. Then again, as Netflix’s streaming offering continues to expand both in scope and popularity, maybe it won’t matter if Redbox becomes a more popular choice for disc rentals.

via Engadget