When Netflix’s troubles began this summer after it announced its hugely unpopular price increases, many analysts predicted that Redbox stood to gain from Netflix’s woes. It’s looking like there is now data to confirm this assumption.
Piper Jaffray senior analyst Michael Olsen has noted that traffic to Redbox.
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com has increased 34% year over year in the third quarter. Olsen also reported that Redbox’s web traffic jumped 46% last month when Netflix’s dreaded price increases went into effect.
Said Olsen:
“Search trend data from Google supports a dramatic uptick in Web activity surrounding Redbox as consumers look at alternatives to replace or supplement new-release movies from Netflix,”
Are you among the thousands of consumers spending more time on Redbox.com (and InsideRedbox.com!) in the wake of the Netflix drama?
(via Home Media Magazine)
No, I have not rented a Redbox movie in about a year. There is too much to watch on Netflix to fill my time.
Absolutely. I used to watch movies exclusively through Netflix (new releases notwithstanding) but since it takes forever to get a disc from them I started going to RedBox.
Then I realized the ease of Redbox and the price issue. Here’s my breakdown —
A movie comes out the same day on Redbox and Netflix. We’ll call it “Movie Title”.
If I rent “Movie Title” from Netflix it’s going to cost me a fraction of my $9.99 per month depending on how many discs I get from Netflix. Usually I won’t watch it right away because there’s no return date and thus it could cost me $3-4 to rent it.
If I rent “Movie Title” from Redbox it’s going to cost me $1 and I’m not going to rent it unless I have the time to watch it. This means that if I prioritize Redbox I’m going to save money and watch more movies.
Thanks to Netflix raising their prices I found Redbox. Thanks to Redbox not having a huge selection I use Netflix to watch older movies and TeeVee shows. This has made me be more aware about how I spend my dollars and what I watch ultimately with Netflix losing out (because I cut back my plan from 3 discs to 1 once I started using Redbox).
I do not understand some peoples comments/complaints. I guess I have good postal service. I am on the 3 at a time plan plus streaming. The price will increase to 28.99 plus tax. I get over 24 movies a month(mostly blu-ray) and my family watches about 4 to 10 hours a week streaming(6 people). Blu-ray is difficult to get at my nearest Redbox. If any company can beat what I am paying, for the same movies I would switch. Not going to happen though any time soon. I do rent 1 movie a week from Redbox. Competion is the name of the game. I am glad to see more players entering the video market. If I really want a specific movie I go to Family Video.
The whole “Netflix price raising” controversy made me re-evaluate my movie renting costs and habits. Here is what I discovered:
I was on Netflix 1 DVD at a time. My Disc Queue was stocked with New release titles, prioritized so that the week they released to Netflix, they were at the top of my queue. I frequently tried to make it so that a title releasing on a Tuesday was delivered to me on the Tuesday it came out.
I found that with 1 DVD at a time, I received Tuesday, mailed Wednesday, Netflix received Thursday, Netflix shipped Thursday, I received Friday, I mailed Saturday, Netflix received Monday and shipped my new release on Monday, starting the whole process over again. This meant I was renting 2 discs a week, which over the course of a month was about 9 discs. The Redbox cost for this would be $9 and the Netflix cost was $9.99. Factoring in manual pick up at Redbox, I saw Netflix vs. Redbox costs as a wash. This balance in pricing was only if my Netflix process went smooth.
In looking things over, though, I noticed that things rarely went “smooth”. The above model assummed that I never hit any kind of Netflix “backlog” where the title I wanted next was not available to ship the same day as I returned a disc. I found that being very New Release heavy, if I didn’t get a title the day it was released, it frequently went into “VERY LONG WAIT” It also assumed that there were only ever 2 DVD’s I wanted in a given week. During the summer, though, there were weeks where only 1 New Release was released that week that I wanted, and in the fall there were sometimes 3 (or more). Lastly, my movie viewing nights had to become Tuesday and Friday, as any delay in watching led to a delay in returning the disc, throwing off my delicate balance.
All in all, I realized these “unsmooth” elements unbalanced the Netflix vs. Redbox price comparison. What was ultimately saving me money again with Netflix was the element of “free streaming,’ which had movies (albeit a limited library) available at all times as a part of my Netflix subscription. Once that was separated into its own $7.99 fee, (even though the 1 DVD at a time price dropped by $2), I saw that Netflix DVD service took far too much effort to be the same price as Redbox, so I let the DVD service drop and just kept the streaming.