RedBox To Launch Streaming Video Service - Page 2

It seems like you're trying to argue but i'm not sure about what. We should be in agreement that the redbox homepage indicates that there is an unspecified waiting period while the redbox instant homepage does not.

As for tone, please just allow me to be annoyed that they are sending spam emailing unrelated to the streaming service that people signed up for.

And I gotta hunch they didn't want to start the beta until after the holidaze.

More spam email received from redbox instant today.
This time it said: "Follow us on Facebook and Twitter for the chance to get a Beta access code even quicker!"
http://ebm.e.redboxinstant.com/c/tag/hBQ5Z0YB8h1hYB8wAJiAABTsIbl/doc.html?t_params=EMAIL%3Ddjfiler%2540yahoo.com

I got a message saying, "You're In! Sign up for the Redbox Instant by Verizon Beta." I started creating a new account but decided that I wasn't interested enough to give it a credit card number. They currently only have players for iOS and Android devices and PC and Mac web browsers. Players for Samsung Smart TVs and other Samsung products (none of which I have) are coming.

Redbox responded to my feedback about lack of info on their streaming service:

Is that link where you got the list of supported devices? The linked page requires a redbox account so I wasn't able to verify. They must be expecting people to sign up for the service before knowing what devices are supported.

This link works without a login:

http://redboxinstant.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/463 , which says:

"Supported devices include most iPhones and Android phones, most iPads and Android tablets, and certain iPod Touch models (all through our free apps.) You also can watch through the browser on many Windows or Mac computers. Coming soon will an app for select Samsung Smart TVs, Samsung Smart Blu-ray Disc players and Samsung home theater systems."

Here are some interesting details about the trial:

http://redboxinstant.custhelp.com/app/TrialHome
Edited by mdavej - 1/3/13 at 2:02pm

So how is it working for you then?

I joined yesterday mainly out of curiosity. The new Redbox streaming effort is pretty sad and I'm surprised Redbox/Verizon would bother launching even a test beta version that had so little to offer subscribers. The only plus side are the 4 'free' rentals each month. At present it will play on computers, tablets and etc. but no streaming devices. I'll likely cancel before my free month trial is over. It may turn out to be something special eventually but with Netflix, Amazon Prime and Hulu+ I'm probably over-subscribed as it is.

You joined yesterday or they sent you got your code yesterday (or both)? I'm still waiting for my code though they did send a free DVD rental code while "waiting".

I should have said they sent the code to test the beta yesterday.

What is the movie selection like for streaming?  Anything current (within the past 2 years)?  Even Netflix is at least 1-2 years behind DVD for most movies that I've seen.

 

Any TV shows for streaming?  I think they were doing movies only for now but figured I'd ask.

Looks as though you can see their selection of movies (and watch trailers) here, sorted by release date. I wasn't logged into an account. No TV.

Nothing at the link except a login and a cartoon video ad that doesn't show any selection of movies.

I would think their objective is testing the streaming so they probably made some deals with the studios for some films for the test period. I'm not thinking though they are going to give you new releases streaming. The kiosks have their "back again" selections which are older. Their player runs on my Acer A500 but unfortunately I have a 12 year old HDTV doing 1080i only and though I have an HDMI converter it can't rescale from the tablet's 720p to 1080i. But then my BD player is a Sony that seems to have a new streaming service every other week so a Redbox player might show up there.

I got a code today to test the beta. I'll need to check it out sometime in the next few days.

Depends on the studio. The streaming release from some studios may be a month behind the rental release. Recent example would be "V/H/S" which released on Netflix WI about a month after it was at Redbox, Vudu, etc. In fact I've taken to checking the "coming release" sites for Netflix WI to see if something that just appeared at Redbox will appear in a month on Netflix.

I agree. But now and then you have Netflix releasing streams at the same time or even before they are on disc. For example, Death Race 3 is now available for streaming but not for rental until next month. It all depends on agreements they reach with each individual studio.


Ian
Edited by mailiang - 1/19/13 at 12:12pm

Those are certainly options for content providers. In some case they might actually make more money releasing to streaming first. I often check out offerings are Redbox and occasionally rent "B-Movie" offerings there on DVD (they are seldom available BD). If it's been available for a while I'll look at the disc and it will look pristine and in fact checking online I might always notice it is available at that kiosk. IOW, I'm one of the few people in my area renting these (and they also aren't at every kiosk of which there are 10 within 2 miles).

It may be that purveyors of minor films may be finding its more lucrative to put them on streaming first and avoid the COG (Cost of Goods) for discs. It is certainly a time for small providers to look at all kinds of options because they are often not tied down to long term contracts as the big studios are.

Well I finally got a beta trial code. Good timing too, having come down with the flu it has been entertaining to explore what RedBox has to offer. Here's my flu-ridden review of the _browsing_ experience. I'll follow up with another post on the actual movie viewing experience.


The first step was to type in the beta trial code and create an account. What came next was a definite turn-off, RedBox requires you to give them payment info in order to use the "free" trial. Apparently their business model is based upon the underhanded tactic of getting people to give them credit card numbers and then forgetting to cancel. That way they can charge an extra month to anyone who forgets to cancel. I know this isn't unheard of but it isn't an upstanding business practice in my book. If asked, they might claim it is to verify customer age before viewing adult content. But that doesn't mean they should automatically convert free trials into charged memberships. The respectable thing to do would be to not auto-enroll people in a paid service.

The movie selection is rather limited right now. It's tough to compare to netflix but my initial impression is that fewer movies are available. This isn't really the fault of either company. They both would likely prefer to offer every movie ever made... if able to license them at a reasonable cost.

The whole service seems to be modeled after netflix. In fact the user interface is nearly identical. This is unfortunate because netflix has a horrible interaction model. Both seem to mimick brick-and-mortar video stores that present customers with walls of movies. There is no there is no other way to browse. It's like they've seen the computer and have purposefully chosen to not use any of the power a computer provides.

Want a list of movies by title? Too bad, that's asking too much. It's also asking too much to be able to view movies by release date, director, leading actors, etc. Instead, you can choose from a handful of categories. Once in a category, the only interaction model is to look at a grid of random icons.

At least part of the user interface is better than netflix though. That is that clicking on a movie brings up the page for that movie rather than immediately playing the movie. When browsing for a movie to watch, it is annoying that netflix plays a movie when clicking on it. They must not realize that when people click on a movie, most of the time they are looking for additional info, not to watch it immediately.

So once a movie is clicked on, a page for that movie is shown. Unfortunately redbox handles this even worse than netflix's pathetic attempt. There is pretty much no information about the movies. A one or two sentence synopsis is provided as well as the average "fan" rating, multiple genre tags, the director's name and a few of the leading actors. None of those names are clickable so it isn't possible to branch off into other movies with those people.

Also baffling is that the year of the movies is kept secret. Apparently they think that people don't want to know when a movie was made.

The MPAA rating is displayed along with icons for HD, SD, aspect ratio and "subscribed". RedBox is calling streaming movies "subscribed" movies. WTF!?

It is possible to bookmark a movie, which I haven't experimented with but appears to be their version of the netflix's instant queue.

There is a user review section which can be sorted by date, rating, or helpfulness. Users can click on each review to define it as helpful or not helpful. Each review is dated, contains a star rating and the reviewer's username. It is also possible to rate movies one to five stars. A tweet and facebook like button are each accompanied by a count of previous tweets or likes.

A nice feature over netflix is that of preview. Now that I think about it, it is astonishing that netflix movie detail pages don't contain trailers.

Finally there is a "more like this section" consisting of unlabeled icons for similar movies.

The iPad redbox streaming app is similar to the website. However it doesn't give the Facebook and tweet counts. It also doesn't allow clicking of genre tags to browse more movies in the genre. The "more like this" section is smaller, 3 movies instead of 6. This is baffling because it is it's own scrollable region, with no purpose for scrolling.

Other minor browsing quibbles:

On neither platform is it possible to un-rate a movie after assigning it a star count.

When there is one review, it is labeled as "1 reviews". As a programmer, it is a pet peeve of mine when singular and plural item counts aren't grammatically correct. It tends to be indicative of a non-OCD programming team. I prefer OCD programmers.


To summarize the browsing experience... it is passable at best. But take into consideration that I also consider netflix to be the same. There's no reason or excuse for such sparse movie detail pages. For those that want it, it should be possible to burrow down to imdb level info on every movie. Limiting details to two sentence synopsis and a few people's names is ridiculously bad. It is astounding that the entire streaming industry is still stumbling around, being completely incapable of constructing a browsing interface that makes full use of modern computer and usability design principles. Instead we're still stuck in the dark ages with almost no info. Even the backs of old VHS and DVD cases provided more info, and they didn't have the possibility of hyperlinks and expandable detail sections.

Seriously, words cannot describe just how horrible these browsing interfaces are. They're the equivalent of trying to shop at walmart but being limited to sitting in front of categorized conveyer belts as random products in those categories slide by.

I can't wait for the day that these streaming companies wake up and give customers more info about movies and allow more flexible browsing than looking at a random list of unlabeled icons.

And now for thoughts on the (beta) RedBox Instant _playback_ experience.

It didn't get off to a good start...

I clicked randomly on the first movie under my mouse pointer "1 Hour to Die" and discovered a low frame rate and hard-matted encoding. The playback area is 16:9 but the encoding was 4:3 with hard encoded letter boxing, resulting in what I refer to as "postage stamp vision". Obviously this was a low-budget B movie so I went back to browsing to see how prevalent the bad encodes are.

Clicking consecutively through the subsequent movies in the browsing interface, it took only 3 more clicks to find another movie with equally bad encoding. It appears that a good percentage of the SD (standard def) movies are hard matted letterbox within 4:3 encodes. But consider that most of these were B-movies like low budget horror films. With much of the redbox instant library consisting of these second-tier movies, the bad streams are somewhat common if you are into watching movies like that.

Even more comical is that the overscan area is visible in some movies. At the top of the screen there were the flickering white dashed lines that I think used to be used for subtitles or macrovision. (Does anyone know exactly what these are?)

Playback on PCs and Macs is handled by silverlight, and seems to perform similarly to netflix. Playback begins 3 to 6 seconds after clicking the play ("watch now") button. And if that button wasn't enough to let you know you can watch it, text immediately above reminds you that it is "ready to watch now". Video quality is decent, but I can't say if it is better or worse than netflix.

If playing the movie in a window instead of full screen, it is aggravating that the playback area is a fixed size and doesn't grow or shrink with the window size. It is also surrounded by a white background with the synopsis, reviews, and "more like this" sections still visible. The movie playback controls auto-hide, most but not all of the time. Some times they remain on-screen.

Dragging the video playback thumb along the timeline is surprisingly responsive. The entire playback area scrubs through video making it easy to find any spot in the movie. In comparison, netflix does the same thing but with a smaller, iconized preview area attached to the scroll thumb. This is even true on the ipad. Nicely done!

Closing a window or hitting the back button doesn't lose your place in a movie. After clicking play (and waiting for the verizon logo to disappear) it is possible to resume or start from the beginning. This worked reliably on the computer but not on the ipad. Accidentally hit the home button or lock button and it will lose your playback position.

One nice thing on the ipad is that it seems to use Apple's standard controls for playback instead of opting for custom controls like with netflix. This is preferable to me because it is less buggy and more predictable. It also allows you to see the time and other icons normally present at the top of the screen simply by bringing touching the screen and bringing up the controls. While watching netflix it isn't possible to check the time without leaving the movie. Maximum volume on the iPad did seem a bit low but this could have been the particular movie I was watching.

Overall, the playback experience was hit or miss. If you're watching a movie that was properly encoded, everything works as expected and is comparable to netflix. I am happy with that experience. However, in my opinion redbox should remove the hard matted, low resolution, poor framerate encodes. Sure it's nice to make their library of movies look larger, but it is quite a let down to click on a movie and find to be one of those completely unwatchable encodes.

The more I use redbox instant (by verizon), the more I dislike their corporate culture. They seem to have no problems delivering a worse experience in exchange for being able to promote their primary business. You may recall that I didn't appreciate redbox's junk mail for kiosk rentals after signing up specifically for a beta streaming trial. Well that has also carried over into their streaming website.

For example:

At the top of the website is a permanent promotion for their kiosk service. It constantly tells me that I have 4 rental credits this month. That is the topmost part of the page, the most valuable screen real-estate in the window and it is devoted to promoting something not requested by the customer.

Below that is the "redbox instant by verizon" button/logo. First of all, how many corporate names do they need to put on the screen? Does anyone really want to be constantly reminded of who the parent corporation is?

Clicking on the button brings up a page that isn't an "instant" homepage, but rather a page that attempts to combine instant streaming and kiosk rentals. But seriously redbox -- err, verizon -- I don't want kiosk rentals. Every time a streaming customer visits the redbox instant (by verizon) website, they have to jump through hoops to see just what they want.

Below the redbox instant by verizon logo/button is the "locations" button. It too is not something that I'm interested in but is given top billing.

Similary, the "more like this" section refuses to just honor the customer's preference. Despite clicking on the "subscription" (which means streaming) filter button, the "more like this" section shows movies that aren't available over the redbox instant (by verizon) service. It is literally impossible to use this feature without constantly getting lead astray.

Doubling checking the url... yep, it's redboxinstant.com.


There are two possibilities here. Redbox instant (by verizon) could honestly be convinced that there is always an overlap bertween kiosk customers and online customers. I find this hard to believe. Many people like either one or the other. So the second possibility seems more likely, that they value cross-promotion of their services more than customer desires.

To fully gain my respect, and possibly my patronage, redbox instant (by verizon) will need to offer customers the ability to segregate the different services. If someone wants to only use kiosks, don't constantly shove streaming in their face. And if someone wants only streaming, don't constantly shove kiosk services in their face.


(Did I sufficiently make the point about "redbox instant by verizon yet".

On the brighter side, there's always Netflix.



Ian