The War Against Redbox Continues: DVD Purchases to Be Limited at Retailers

Posted by on February 1st, 2010   Filed under: DVD and Blu-ray, Industry News
Source: /Film

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With Netflix already starting to be policed by the movie companies (Warner Bros. just created a 28 day window between the release of a DVD and its availability to be rented), the new kid in town Redbox is now in the crosshairs as well. Retailers Wal Mart and Target have recently put a limit on how many copies of a DVD can be bought by a single person. The limit has been set to five, but the retailers each have a different time frame for how long this will be enforced (Wal Mart for 28 days, Target for a week). By doing this, they hope to… well, I’m unsure really.

According to /Film, in theory, it would stop someone from buying a whole bunch of DVDs to put into the Redbox system — but if three Redbox employees each buy five copies, then it doesn’t really do anything. Russ Fischer’s idea of the same employee going to several different stores on the same day also negates this limitation being put into place.

I do understand retailers fear of Redbox: at one dollar a day for a rental, it is quite cheaper than purchasing a DVD and probably slows down a person’s penchant for an impulse buy. However, in an age where people can torrent films and can buck the system however they choose, imposing a purchasing limitation is not going to help in the slightest. Plus, people who are true film nerds (this is where I raise my hand) will still buy the DVDs. If Wal Mart and Target really want to hurt the new Redbox system, they should kick them out of their stores, decreasing their visibility. Then again, I would assume they get a kickback from whatever Redbox makes, so this strikes me as something more to appease movie companies and get them to stop complaining for a little while.



  • ME

    Red box employees can not leave then come back and purchase 5 more copies. It is in the system so after you use a credit card you will not be able to use that same card again at any walmart. Not only that but Redbox has 20,000+ kiosk and they stock 50 copies of each new release that’s 1,000,000 movies they need at 5 copies at a time is 200,000 trips in and out of Walmart with only 800 employees that’s 250 trips in and out of Walmart each just to get the titles. This will stop Redbox from stocking titles that the studios are restricting. Eventually they will be forced to observe these windows.

  • Matt

    DVD sale are waning… so kneejerk reaction is to act against rental companies. Guess they dont think that maybe a lot of people are still waiting to upgrade to blu-ray (in a crappy economy), or that DVD sales could not stay at such a high rate forever.

  • It’s incredibly short sited on the movie studios part.
    Rented movies usually includes previews of upcoming theatrical and DVD releases at the beginning of the feature movie. That’s free advertising for them. Nevermind the other advertising that sometimes pops up on a rented DVD.
    The idea of preventing companies like Netflix, RedBox, and Zip up here in Canada from purchasing millions of copies of their product seems insane.

  • Duke Togo

    I think Redbox would get into big trouble for renting out ‘off the shelf’ DVD’s which they don’t have a legal right to charge ‘admission’ to view without a license fee paid to the studios. I can’t charge admission to my home to view a DVD, I’m guessing Redbox’s business model is based on a renter defaulting to a buyer after 25 days, maybe that’s how they are legally able to rent without profit sharing with studios. We no longer have the $90 vhs tape releases that were common 2 decades ago.

  • Duke Togo

    I’m sure deep discount dvd, Amazon and other online retailers have no problems shipping more that 5 dvds at a time of a single title, free shipping too without tax.

  • Duke Togo

    Netflix has been burning their own discs for years, or the studios have been custom burning discs for them, that’s how Texas Chainsaw Massacre scenes ended up on some Dr Who DVDs.

  • I’ve been a Netflix user now for over two years and since that time I have not bought a single DVD, and I have sold off most of my 600+ DVD’s down to a small 200 collection.
    So, I see where the studios are in trouble but this just seems to be the wrong approach.
    The studios need to evolve and find other ways to get their products, at a cheaper cost, to the consumer. Why don’t some big name studios band together and start their own mail service, or their own digital rental service?

  • xego

    This is a real issue for me (and I did post about this on the site some other time) But in my town we had one of the first few completely automated 24hr DVD renal place (Video Depot) and it was kind of cool. In honesty it didn’t have any more selection than the store did before it went automated but it had a hell of a lot more than one of those crappy red boxes. It was kind of comforting knowing that if I wanted to watch “Goonies” at 3am I had a pretty good shot at it. Try that with your REdBox (sounds like a venereal disease) not to mention they were building a respectable Blu-ray catalog. Then the Redboxes started showing up everywhere, and the video store tried to compete by lowering its price to a dollar as well and that was appreciated but it didn’t last. It didn’t take long before the Redbox drove them right out of business. And Why? Because cotton-headed soccer moms love the convenience of renting the same 20 new releases at the mobil station or the grocery store.

    There are other repercussions as well I think. When I am in the line at the grocery store I always check out the DVD’s for sale and it seems that all the new releases are completely bare bones? Does anyone remember the DVD packaging for “Fight Club” when it first came out? or “SEvEn” or “Pulp Fiction”? I am not talking about double or triple dips that came later I am talking about awesome packaging and features right out of the gate. Maybe these are separate issues but I seem to remember something about the studios limiting discs with special features to rental outlets like Netflix and redbox?

  • Jonathan

    I think Fox has talked about, or has implemented, taking special features out of rental discs. I do understand that, and that’s not a horrible idea. True fans of certain films will buy them to watch the special features, and it allows the rest of the public to still see the movie.

  • doctorwhocaine

    i went to jail for stabbing a blockbuster employee, im going to steal as many red boxes as i please even if i need a chainsaw.

  • JT

    Do you know who owns Redbox. Check it out. Coinstar (1 bill annual revenue) and McDonalds who started the company still owns the majority. Yeah, McDonald’s ever heard of them (22 billion in sales last year). All of this is large companies positioning to get the largest piece of the DVD rental pie. The only way to avoid this is to rent from your local video rental house.