Considering how much I’ve written about DVD kiosks, some may be surprised that I recently made my first Redbox DVD rental. I was at the grocery store last week and saw that the kiosk offered the most recent Indiana Jones movie. Indiana Jones has always been a favorite of mine, so on an impulse I rented the DVD. I probably would have rented from Redbox sooner, but between TiVo, Netflix and Internet movies and TV shows, I’ve had no shortage of content and couldn’t justify spending even a measly buck.

The entire rental process was very easy and only reinforced my belief that Redbox will be wildly successful with their business model. In fact, I’ve also noticed that 7-11 has even begun testing Redbox at their stores. I’m not sure if it was the convenience of using a machine instead of dealing with long lines and surly video store clerks or the convenience of being able to make a rental as I was finishing up my grocery shopping, but now that I’ve gotten a taste, I’m sure that I’ll be back.

While it would be hard to improve on the kiosk experience, in thinking about my own entertainment needs, I realized that there is one area of the kiosk market that is still being ignored. When it comes to DVDs, there have been a number of firms who’ve thrown their hat into the kiosk ring, but so far we haven’t seen anyone introduce a kiosk system that dispenses video games.

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I hereby declare August 14th, 2008 as Netflix Dysfunction Day. I woke up this morning to a notification that my Netlix account would be upgraded (yay), followed by a notification that Netflix isn’t actually shipping any discs (boo). Normally, a couple day delay wouldn’t ruffle my feathers… However, I’m knee-deep in an HBO Wire marathon and had expected my next disc to ship on Tuesday and arrive yesterday - though it hasn’t actually yet left their facilities. So I did something I haven’t done in years and purchased a DVD (box set). The question is: How’ll I recycle the Season 2 discs in a few days?

Yep, I’ve publicly poo-pooed the idea of disposable DVDs… But it seems to me that Flexplay has found a compelling market for the products: Airline passengers. In this era of Netflix, digital downloads, and Redbox kiosks, I doubt their target audience is large enough to keep them going. In fact, I assume this space will eventually be served by iPod and iPhone video-loading stations. But (in the interim) for $6 I had a better in-flight movie experience than most of my fellow travelers. Normally I’d bring my own video (BYOV) and at a lower cost, but I didn’t plan ahead. (Of course, I’d have picked up a Flexplay DVD for scientific purposes anyhow.) As to the technical details, some sort of air-induced chemical reaction clouds the disc which begins to limit playback after 48 hours - though, Distburbia is still going strong after 60 hours. And, yes, I did verify Handbrake will rip something usable.