Now all we have to do is turn on our favorite gaming console, smart TV, Blu-Ray player, smartphone or run down to one of thousands of Redbox kiosks to pick up a movie for the night. It's convenient, easier, and the titles are always in stock. How could it get much better? What if you didn't have to put pants on so you can go to a Redbox kiosk? Instead you could just rent something that's available at the kiosk immediately from the comfort of your own home while in your underwear. "Well, that sounds totally rad! Sign me up!" Well slow down, Champ and clean the Cheeto's dust of your fingers, because unfortunately, it just ain't that easy...yet.
At first glance, Redbox Instant sounds great. For $8 a month, you get access to unlimited video streaming and 4 credits to be used at the kiosk. It's cheaper than Netflix and you still get the option of picking up a New Release DVD at any Redbox location, instead of waiting for it to come in the mail. Netflix has JUST become worthless, Right?! Well not quite..
UNLIMITED STREAMING
We're all familiar with how the Redbox kiosk works, so let's jump straight into Netflix's newest competition, Redbox Instant. Redbox Instant works just the same as Netflix. You get thousands of movies that can be streamed at any time. There's even an app for Android and iOS, with an app for Xbox coming in the near future.
But as we all know, a streaming service will only be successful if it has a good selection of titles to watch, and here is Redbox Instant is behind. Now I don't want to judge them too harshly on this quite yet, as all streaming services are going to start off with a limited selection and then grow with time. Redbox Instant has actually grown quite a bit since I joined the beta close to a month ago, but it still has a ways to go to catch up to Netflix and currently, the streaming titles are limited to Movies with no TV Shows available as of yet. This may change in the future, but Redbox has not mentioned if that's coming any time soon.
As far as the quality of the streaming, well we'll talk about that later. Here's a little preview: it's terrible.
RENTING VIA STREAMING
Here is where I thought Redbox was going to steal the show. "$1 movie rentals without having to leave the house?! Goodbye Netflix!" Oh if only it were that easy.
Unfortunately, the rentals aren't that cheap. No $1 rentals here. Instead, the same movie that I could rent at a Redbox kiosk for $1 is closer to $5 or $6, as you can see in the screenshot below.
Of course you get the convenience of not having to leave the house, but a $5 difference is pretty substantial and it puts them at the same price as other popular streaming services such as Amazon. Something that could set them apart is if you could use one of your four free rental credits per month towards a streaming rental, even if it only gave you a couple of dollars off, but as of yet, that's not an option.
APP QUALITY
So how well does the app work? Let me describe it in one word: BLECH! This app is horrendous. It's slow, crashes often, and movies will stop in the middle and buffer endlessly even while on a high speed wifi connection. And when the movie is streaming, the quality is terrible. It's like trying to watch Avatar on your Atari 2600. The regular Redbox app for reserving movies is built so much better. Instead of just adding a streaming tab to the regular app, they went and built a buggy, ugly mess.
And for all you rooted Android users out there, sorry, this app just won't work. I have a strong feeling that Verizon has something to do with this as they have a strong hate for rooted phones and they helped build this app.
CONCLUSION
SAVE YOUR MONEY! Put that $8 towards renting 8 DVD's at a Redbox kiosk. The selection is terrible, rentals are the same price as everyone else, the app is absolutely awful, and streaming quality is nonexistent.
Stick to using Redbox for new release rentals at the kiosk and get your streaming video elsewhere. Redbox will not be dethroning Netflix as the king of streaming anytime soon.
Of course, Redbox Instant is still in beta and may have many improvements coming before it's publicly released. But the service should've been a lot further along before even releasing it to a private beta. There is way too much competition for Redbox to release such a broken service.
ALTERNATIVES
Amazon- My personal favorite in the on demand renting department- With an Amazon Prime membership, you get access to thousands of TV Shows and Movies. Amazon is quickly rivaling Netflix and it's actually a cheaper alternative. Netflix is $96/year or $8/month, while Prime is $79/year which has even more value if you're a frequent Amazon shopper such as myself, including free two-day shipping or $4 overnight and free book rentals if you own a Kindle device. Streaming quality is great and Amazon tends to throw free $5 video credits in with many purchases, so you build up a bunch of free rentals quite quickly. The only downside is that there currently isn't an Amazon streaming app available for on the go outside of owning a Kindle Fire. But it is available on game consoles and Blu-Ray players.
Netflix- The grandad and current king of streaming. With the biggest selection of movie titles and TV shows, Netflix is the go to for all streaming needs. Also, Netflix has begun producing their own TV Shows only available on their service such as House of Cards (Excellent show) and they have an exclusive deal with the new Arrested Development episodes. Netflix has fantastic HD streaming quality and is available on almost any device that runs on batteries. It's only downside is not having the options to pay to rent a newer release title.
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