Blockbuster's trying to corner the DVD kiosk market in the Big Apple, where it will deploy rental machines in more than 200 locations.
The kiosks, operated by partner company NCR Entertainment, will be installed at Duane Reade drug stores around Manhattan, Video Business reports. Duane Reade is New York City's largest drug store chain despite being unheard of outside the area, and Blockbuster will have more kiosks in the city than any competitor, including rival Redbox. All kiosks should be running by the end of the year.
Like Redbox, Blockbuster's kiosk rentals cost $1 per night -- a concession, after $2 rentals failed in a pilot program -- and each kiosk will stock over 900 DVDs. It doesn't appear that the kiosks will stock Blu-ray rentals. You can return a DVD to any kiosk, which is a nice convenience in a city where it's difficult to get around.
Blockbuster is (actually) doing something right by heading into New York so aggressively. To a consumer, there's no distinguishable difference between Blockbuster and Redbox kiosks, so the company with the most visibility wins.
What's not certain, but what I'm hoping will exist, is some sort of interaction between the kiosks and brick-and-mortar stores, especially if studios impose a 30-day delay on new releases in kiosks, as they're trying to do with Redbox. Blockbuster president Jim Keyes has only mentioned a business strategy, saying that if a 30-day delay is necessary, Blockbuster can transfer new releases from the store to the kiosks once the window passes.
But that means little to the consumer. Instead of treating the store and kiosk like separate entities, why not make them work together? Let's say I go to a kiosk expecting to get a new release. Ideally, a Blockbuster kiosk would list the movie and say "Sorry, this isn't available yet through our kiosks," and then tell the customer where the nearest rental store is located. Maybe even give customers a discount for their trouble, providing a better lure to the store. Alternatively, Blockbuster could tell customers how the new release can be accessed digitally through supported devices such as TiVo.
Those services, at least, cannot be provided by Redbox or Netflix.
