I used to rent from them on a weekly basis, but in the last half year or so, nothing is ever in stock, even with 3 different kiosks in my town. I get that not many people rent DVD's anymore, but for $2.25, its was a hell of a deal.
shareI've never used one. I'm not sure whether there are any around here or not. Probably are, but I don't recall seeing any.
shareYou can click "find a kiosk" and enter your zip code.
shareOkay, I took a moment to look. There are three in town - 2 at Walgreen's, 1 at Walmart; two stores I never shop, so...🤷🏻♀️ However, I borrow movies for free from my local library.
shareI need to get a library card. I usually buy used books, but even those are rising in price. And DVD rentals would be a welcome extra.
shareI get movies all of the time from the library - if my location doesn't have what I want, it can be ordered and transferred so I can pick it up. My branch is only 1 1/2 miles from my house.
The Kroger near me has Redbox and I occasionally rent something that is a newer release.
Ive never used one either but it seems like a good concept. Now everything is streaming.
shareI've never used one.
shareImpressive considering they've been around for 20 years.
sharedo they have these in canada?
shareEvidently, they used to, but according to this article, they don't have any anymore.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/redbox-dvd-rental-business-leaving-canada-1.2947617
Never used Redbox. I used to rent movies from Blockbuster and Hollywood Video, but once I switched from dial-up to cable internet I got everything from Pirate Bay. I've been sailing the high seas ever since.
shareDo you ever feel guilty about that? No judgement either, just curious.
shareNot only do I not feel guilty, I actually enjoy it. I still get a thrill when I hunt down some obscure movie, or when I finish downloading an entire series that's like 60GB. I don't just do it because it's free — although that is obviously the main benefit — I will literally do it even if I can watch something legally. For example, my cousin gave me his passwords to all of his streaming services, I can watch for free, legally, but I still choose not to do it. I love sailing the high seas. When I was 10, before the internet, I would copy tapes that I would rent from video rental stores. So in one form or another, I've been doing it pretty much my entire life.
I also hate corporations and am an anti-capitalist.
Here are the main reasons why I prefer getting my media this way:
• I like it
• It's free
• It's easier to get anything/everything and it's all in one place
• I can get the show/movie in different formats (480p/720p/1080p/2160p)
• I can get the show/movie in different languages (same thing goes for subtitles)
• I can watch it using my own player (SMplayer) with my own custom interface
• Watching it on SMplayer allows me to change the aspect ratio, delay the audio, delay the subtitles, adjust the picture anyway I want, for example I could turn the picture 90°, or upside down (this can be useful if you have to read something sideways), or apply video filters.
• I could use the side buttons on my wireless mouse to rewind/fast forward the video and the scroll wheel to control volume.
• I could edit the video or clip things out.
• I could have a collection of thousands of movies and hundreds of TV shows and store them all on one hard drive instead of having the room cluttered with boxes.
• I can make copies of all my media for friends and family.
A pirates life is the only life for me. AAaaaarrgh! ☠️
Are you confident you won't be caught? I understand there are security measures like VPNs and such, but it still seems risky.
shareIt depends on how you do it. I have a website where I get all my new TV shows and movies. Using this site, the possibility of being caught is pretty much zero. However, if I'm looking for an older movie or a whole season of a series (or the entire series), the only way is to use torrents. When it comes to torrents I have a couple more tricks up my sleeve. I found a website that will download a torrent for you, and then you just download the finished file from the website. The site is encrypted and functions like Google Drive. No one can see what you are downloading from it. The site takes all the risks torrenting the files, while you are protected. The problem with this site is that with a free account you have a limit of only 2GB. This is fine for movies since most of them in 1080p are under 2GB. However, if you want to download a TV show, the torrent is often the entire season or the entire series which is going to be an order of magnitude bigger. So for TV shows you have to torrent them yourself.
When torrenting without any proxies or VPNs, most of the time you will be fine, but once in a while you'll be caught and you will get a letter warning you that you were caught and you could be sued. When I used to get these letters back in the day, I would read them, then I would toss them in the trash, and then continue to torrent. When my ISP throttled my speed because I was torrenting, I called them up and told them to fix it or I will cancel my service, then they bring the speeds back up, and I go back to torrenting. If you want to avoid all this hassle then you can find yourself a proxy or a VPN (you could set up your own on a server in a different country) and then torrent through that. If you do this there is virtually no risk. You could also get a paid account from that website that torrents files for you and you will have like a 30GB limit, which is enough for most TV shows. However, since you then have to pay for an account, it kind of defeats the purpose of pirating.
AAaaaarrgh! ☠️
• It's easier to get anything/everything and it's all in one place
AAaaaarrgh Matey! Good to have ya back on the high seas.
shareI've never used one before. I think there was one at the local grocery store at one point; maybe it's still there. I mostly stopped renting movies when I first got cable internet in 2002. The video rental store that had been here since the early 1980s closed in 2008 or so, and by that time I hadn't even been there in years.
shareYeah, I have all the channels, but am thinking about getting rid of them. With so many streaming options now, it doesn't seem worth the price.
shareWhat channels? I first got cable internet in 2002, not cable TV (I haven't had cable TV since 1996). That allowed me to download a 700 MB Xvid-encoded DVD rip fairly quickly (about 20 minutes rather than 20 hours on dial-up). These days the movies I download are much larger, usually around 8 to 12 GB, sometimes 20-something GB, but my internet speed is also a lot faster than it was in 2002, and my hard drives have way more capacity. I had two hard drives back then totaling 200 GB capacity, and now I have over 9 TB capacity.
I've never paid anything to download a movie (not counting the monthly internet bill, which costs the same whether I download any movies or not), because they don't come from authorized sources. I wouldn't watch movies on a streaming site even if it were free; the bitrate is usually on the low side and I don't like being saddled with whatever crappy embedded video player the site happens to use. The only streaming site I frequent is YouTube, but I don't watch movies there.
The only time I pay to watch a movie is for a movie I've already seen and I know that I like it well enough to want to buy the Blu-ray. I don't do that very often though. I first started buying Blu-rays in 2017, which is when I got an HD projector that made Blu-ray quality worthwhile, and I currently have 54 of them. That averages out to 9 per year, but I don't buy one almost every month like that average would suggest, because a lot of them came in box sets. For example, my Friday the 13th box set included 8 movies (only $25.79 brand new), my Rocky box set has 6 movies, and so on. I also have a couple box sets that I got for Christmas.
YES SIR...MY DAUGHTER AND I HAVE RENTED THOUSANDS OF DISCS FROM THE REDBOX OVER THE YEARS...LESS LATELY...BUT A COUPLE TIMES A MONTH PROBABLY STILL...A FEW YEARS AGO WE WERE RENTING NEARLY EVERY NIGHT...I WAS BUYING REDBOX FREE RENTAL CODES 20 AT A TIME ON EBAY FOR LIKE 5 BUCKS.
shareI always used to look forward to Tuesday for new releases, but the last 4 movies I was interested in weren't available.
shareYUP...TUESDAY WAS ONCE A PRETTY EXCITING DAY...WE USED TO KNOW ONE OF THE GUYS WHO SERVICES THE REDBOX...HE WOULD GIVE US ALL THE OLD DESPLAYS...THE REDBOX SEEMS TO BE DYING THOUGH...THEY HAVE BEEN PULLED FROM SOME LOCATIONS BY US AND OTHER GO OUT OF SERVICE FOR LONG PERIODS OF TIME.
shareRedbox definitely seems to be on its last legs. I think they tried to get into the streaming game a year or two back, but it never really took off.
shareTuesdays are still a thing! It is my "look for new movies" day.
shareNope, haven't used them in like five years.
share