Hands On With Redbox Instant

adeelarshad82 writes "The three things any streaming service needs in order to be successful are: a good price, a massive content library, and a decent app that is available on as many devices as possible. Unfortunately the only thing Redbox Instant has going for it right now is the price. The digital library that comprises Redbox Instant at the moment is limited to a handful of comedies, budget horror flicks, and one or two blockbuster titles from the last year. However, there is hope that once the final version is launched, Verizon FiOS On Demand's massive libraries of current television shows will be made available on Redbox. As for the app itself: while it's well designed and offers filtering by search, genre and rating, its biggest drawback is that it's only available on iOS and Android devices. You can't even stream from the Redbox website."

Not true, you can stream from the website

[Anonymous Coward]

If you have a valid code and go to redboxinstant.com you can stream the movies in the browser. Requires silverlight like netflix....

Re:Blockbuster titles from last year

[kelemvor4]

It really doesn't matter what the reason is. There really isn't much worthwhile content on Netflix these days. There was never enough content but it used to be substantially better with their starz content.

That's entirely a matter of opinion. I still watch far more content on netflix than I do on any other platform (including the cable tv service with several movie channel packages that I pay for). I wish they had even more, but to say there isn't much worthwhile... that's not been my experience.

Missing basic features

[Cammi]

When I was notified on facebook that I could sign up for the beta. I checked the website and confirmed via facebook that they currently support xbox 360. With that in mind, I signed up, and got the entry on Monday. Come to find out ... they lied. There is no xbox 360 support. Not only that, they removed the statement from the website. (but did not remove the facebook reference). So ... what happened? I cannot test. I can see all the pretty movies (perhaps 0.01% of the netflix/amazon/hulu/vudu libraries) listed, but it's no good. Plus it is $6 a month for the streaming (for some reason Redbox setups isnt available in Alaska). But with a library smaller then all other services, and all the same movies/shows are available, the service is really worth about 10 cents.