When Was The Last Time You...?

 

Sure, they're still there, at gas stations, grocery stores, McDonalds, and at one time we used to frequent these amazing kiosks on a regular basis...

But, not much anymore.

It's not that the product the red Redbox boxes push has changed, but I think the way we--and by "we" I mean, our family--has changed. Case in point, after we moved, we unpacked our DVD and BluRay players, but we never hooked them up. It wouldn't take much to plug in the HDMI cable and throw in a disk, but it's just something we haven't done and I don't know when we will.

When I say my first Redbox kiosk, I was blown away. I thought it was one of the most amazing things anyone had produced. Sure, the movies were not first-run. To see those movies, you'd need to go to the megaplex across the street, but for a couple of bucks (and availability, of course...), you could watch movies that came out a few months earlier in the comfort of your own home. I even remember seeing a new DVD kiosk for sale and I think it was around $3k at the time. I even thought at the time it would be cool to buy one of these kiosks and go into the vending business. 

That was a long time ago. Things change. Even before we moved, we used Redbox less and less because, well...there were so many new movies that we didn't want to watch. We may be in the minority here, but there wasn't anything for us. We usually went home and re-watched something we either had in our DVD library or found something online.

Yes, the boxes are still there and they still have movies. They must be there because people still use them. I wonder, though, if one day the Redbox kiosk will become the new public pay phone. Those used to be everywhere, too...

I guess time will tell.