Redbox, Everywhere: Summer 2024 4 comments
Well, we are one step closer to doing away with physical media as Redbox comes to an end.
DVD rental service Redbox is set to shut down after 22 years in business, as streaming continues to dominate the at-home entertainment market.
Redbox’s parent company, Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment, changed its Chapter 11 bankruptcy case, filed last month, to a Chapter 7 liquidation case on Wednesday. The conversion signifies that the company couldn’t come up with a repayment plan for its outstanding debts and will soon turn to selling off assets to pay back creditors.
If you had movies on the Redbox app, well, you probably don't...
Roku has finally axed the Redbox app from its platform. Redbox parent company Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in June and moved to Chapter 7 in July, signaling the liquidation of its assets. However, the app has remained available but not fully functional in various places, leaving customers wondering if they will still be able to access content they bought. This development, however, mostly squashes any remaining hope of salvaging those purchases.
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There is also uncertainty about what will happen to the 24,000 remaining Redbox kiosks and their DVDs. As Chicken Soup filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy, it’s expected that the kiosks will be taken down, but we don’t know when or how they'll be disposed of.
Last month, CVS filed a motion [PDF] asking the US Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware (where Chicken Soup filed for bankruptcy) to allow it to “dispose of” thousands of Redbox kiosks. In its filing, CVS said that its contract with Redbox ended in 2023, at which point Redbox was obligated to remove “over 2,500 kiosks” from CVS stores, but many remained.
As of tonight the unit at the Beltline & Forest Walgreens is up and running, but the movies don't look to have been updated in over a month.
4 Responses to 'Redbox, Everywhere: Summer 2024'
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Tom
21 Aug 24 at 9:15 am
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Call me old fashioned but when I purchase something like music or video I want something tangible such as a physical or downloadable copy of the media. Purchasing something that just gives you the right to access something on some server somewhere is ludicrous
Homer
22 Aug 24 at 9:25 am
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Owning physical copies also gives you options if the Internet is down. And the cost of subscribing to multiple streaming services, just to access enough of what you want, is ridiculous.
Lavender
22 Aug 24 at 5:38 pm
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i saw an article recently about one of the Redbox technicians who had been let go. It really was bad because they quit getting paid for travel several months ago. They also lost medical insurance and the company was screwing around and making a lot of false promises. He showed the amount of DVD's that he had on hand at his house. It was around 15,000 discs. I've noticed since then that eBay is full of people selling 50 disc lots of old Redbox products.
Matt
22 Aug 24 at 8:44 pm
I used to rent a lot of DVDs from Redbox thinking at the very least I would get at least a dollar's worth of entertainment.
Once I happened upon a man servicing one of the machines, he was kind enough to show the "guts" of it and how it worked. I have to say it is a fascinating piece of equipment.
I still say the idea and concept for Redbox was very good at the time, but unfortunately it became a victim of the times.