The crimson kiosks read “the smartest way to watch and play.” The accuracy of that claim depended largely on how you defined “smart.”
Launched in the early 2000s, Redbox offered a hybrid of sorts: Blockbuster-style DVD and game rentals in a small kiosk that might have been tucked into the corner of a gas station or fast-food joint. In another era, one in which Netflix didn’t offer to mail you discs and streaming wasn’t on the horizon, this would have been a clever idea. In the era you and I currently live in, Redbox was all but doomed.
That is to say, that doom-laden prophecy has come true. On Wednesday, the judge overseeing the bankruptcy proceedings of Redbox’s parent company, Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment (yes, really) Approved a motion effectively moving the company’s bankruptcy from Chapter 11 to Chapter 7 calling the company Redbox to close 24,000 kiosks and streaming service. Another physical media business is collapsing.
Redbox kiosks were never the right idea at the right time. AV Club took note This week, they started life”(Let’s not fuck with you) as self-service grocery vending machines owned and operated by McDonald’s,” and as they evolved they never found their audience. Netflix began shipping DVDs directly to people’s homes in the late 1990s, and while Redbox provided a nice alternative for movie viewers who didn’t want a subscription service, the market of people who cared enough about movies to leave the house to get them, but didn’t care enough to own Netflix, turned out not to be lucrative enough.
But Redbox’s death also signals something else: another final belch in the death knell of physical media. While acolytes cling to vinyl and other physical products, DVDs and Blu-rays are disappearing. Netflix shipped its last disc nearly a year ago. Best Buy is planning Phasing out physical disc sales. Often the only way to find obscure titles, DVDs (and in some cases VHS) are becoming harder to find. That’s why Los Angeles-based nonprofit video store Vidiots is working so hard to maintain a library of them.
It’s not like Redbox is known for its extensive collection of rare indie films, but considering that streaming has a certain stranglehold on how most people access movies and TV shows, fans often end up unable to seek out obscure titles at any given time because they’re being incinerated somewhere in town. The hell of streaming rights or become a tax deduction. After years of imagining that streaming would put the riches of cinema within our reach, it’s become clear that, where possible, that means subscribing to Netflix, Max, Amazon Prime Video, and probably Criterion Channel as well.