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Comment by fbdab103 | Hacker News Reader

I think there is a market for them. Think of the many people who still have terrible internet, with no hope for improvement. Getting a weekend movie for significantly cheaper than a theater experience is going to make financial sense.

Even if you have streaming subscription(s) you have to break out your abacus to determine if your service(s) have rights to the movie this month.

That being said, I have no idea what are their expenses. On the surface, it feels like they should have low costs, so I might be making wild assumptions. Or maybe there is a Bain Capital like situation behind the scenes intentionally destroying the business.,

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> Think of the many people who still have terrible internet, with no hope for improvement.

Umm, I'm thinking, but the best I can come up with:

1. Rural/extremely out-of-the-way locations. Which means that locating a Redbox that is profitable is going to be extremely difficult because by definition you're in low-density areas.

2. Extremely poor people. Even most lower class people have cell phones these days where you can watch video, so the number of people in reasonably dense areas who can't afford broadband is going to be very low.

I do think the "multiple subscription services" issue is a valid point, but in general I think that most Redbox users are likely just slow adopters, similar to folks with landlines. The problem is that customer base slowly but surely goes away.

The local Redbox machines here seem to do steady business. I see people using them almost every time I get groceries.

Rural people who can't get internet at home likely can't get good cell service at home either. You only have to be a few miles off of the main roads before service degrades rapidly.

Also, the unbanked. People who have money but bad or no credit.

But all that said, while it might still be possible to make some money with DVD rental vending in 2024, but it's not a growth business at all.

I think the other comments still hold, Just because there are customers, it doesn't mean that you can make profit from them. Not sure what their margins are, but someone in an older comment said that Redboxes require foot traffic of 10k+. These things seem to require at a least weekly visits, restock, etc. Also been awhile since I have seen a Redbox, but do they take cash? I thought they were Credit Cards only.

I have good internet and I'm not poor, but I don't do streaming services. That whole scene is just more hassle than it's worth to me. I also rarely use RedBox (but I do occasionally), so I am probably an oddball.

> so I am probably an oddball.

I love you John, but you're definitely an oddball! I say that with full affection from a fellow oddball :-)

Totally fair. :)

You're mistaken. No offense, but I think maybe you haven't been out and about much, or (reasonably!) haven't been paying attention to little local details when you have been.

Like coin exchangers and lottery scratcher machines, Redbox kiosks exist pretty much wherever the bulk of a community buys stuff for their fridge: supermarket, dollar store, convenience store, etc.

They're extremely well distributed.

And until Starlink, which is new and expensive and unfamiliar, many more (North American) communities than you think did not offer home broadband that was suitable for reliable streaming. Service was still traditional satellite, weak DSL, and maybe 3G in many places.

Plus, what made Redbox appealing to many was that you could spend a few dollars for a familiar, popular film when you had a few dollars to spare instead of committing to a whole bunch of recurring subscriptions just to hope that the title you want would eventually come up.

Certainy, the business model as a whole is becoming increasingly strained, but it continues to serve consumer needs that still aren't serviced vert well by anybody else. It's a sort of crossover point, but if the company collapses instead of restructures, it's going to disappoint and frustrate quite a lot of people.

You mean existed. 90%+ of the locations in my area have vanished (and not especially recently)

It's funny you go into details about how used these things are in response to an article about the company going bankrupt. Clearly you have something figured out that they don't. Maybe there's an opportunity for you.

Huh? A busines becoming unsustainable or unprofitable is completely different than its products having been entirely unused. My comment even noted that they seem to be at or beyond some crossover point in viability.

They had as many as 42,000 kiosks. Tens of thousanda remain. They are used every day. Yet the future of the company looks bleak and the finances are in crisis. All those things can be true at once.

I think you may have misunderstood my comment. I was not at all saying that people and places without high speed Internet don't exist. I was saying that the people and places that only have poor Internet services (poor people and rural areas) are also the people and places for which building a profitable Redbox distribution channel is most difficult, if not impossible given this bankruptcy news.

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