Redbox Looking to Add Streaming Service

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Posted October 30th, 2010 at 5:03 pm

An increasingly significant driver of subscriptions to Netflix comes due to the company’s streaming of a large library of movie and television content. A study recently came out and said as much as 20% of the traffic on the internet at any given time is taken up by Netflix streaming. That is pretty astonishing to consider and quite surprising.

Redbox, with their over 25K kiosks strategically placed all across the US, have been a huge success as well and continues to show growth. The two companies combined have for all intents and purposes killed the rental stores such as Blockbuster.

So with the news of just how significant the streaming side of Netflix is it only seems natural that Redbox would follow suit. They have announced they are in negotiations with several parties to launch a Redbox-branded streaming service.

At first glance it doesn’t seem to be as good a fit considering visits to kiosks are required for the regular rentals (whereas Netflix is all completed without having to leave the house). It will be interesting to see how they tie the two sides in and what they end up charging but it will likely be comparable to the lowest Netflix packages. Redbox has expanded their service to include Blu-ray movies and most recently video games.