Redbox Instant by Verizon

Unfortunately, I have not been impressed with Redbox Instant by Verizon so far. I received a free one month trial from BzzAgent (though anyone can sign up for a free trial here). The trial included access to streaming movies on their website, as well as four credits for renting from any Redbox kiosk.

My husband and I have not really used Redbox in the past, so we were excited to try out the new service. We used all four of our DVD credits at kiosks in our area. The great thing about that is that we learned where the kiosks are closest to our house! The Redbox website makes it easy to browse the movies available to rent at the kiosk and reserve one for a certain site. It's equally as easy to browse at the kiosk. We also liked that you could return movies to any kiosk, not just the one you picked up the movie from.

However, all of that nice stuff above is not new - it's part of regular Redbox, and has been for awhile. The new product is Redbox Instant, the main purpose of which is supposedly streaming movies online. And this is the part I found very disappointing. We found very few movies we were interested in watching among the selection available for streaming. The service claims to have new releases and a good selection, but I just did not find that to be true.

The most frustrating thing to me was the service's website. I found it confusing and difficult to tell which movies were available to stream versus to rent at the kiosk. Then I discovered that there is a whole other category: movies available to PAY to stream. These aren't part of Redbox Instant, but you can pay (usually $4.99 or more) to stream them from your computer. It needs to be clearer which category you're browsing through on the website. I would find a video I was interested in seeing, see the words "WATCH NOW" and think I could watch it as part of the Redbox Instant subscription. Only to find that when I clicked WATCH NOW, it said I had to pay.

I understand that part of the issue with having certain movies available for streaming is with copyrights and the people who make the movies. But if similar subscription-based streaming services (Amazon Prime, Netflix, Hulu Plus) can provide better choices, why can't Redbox Instant? I've tried all three of those other services, and as of now, I'd take any of them over Redbox Instant.

When I did stream a movie, I used my Mac laptop. The quality was great, and it took NO time to load. This is definitely an improvement over similar services - if Redbox Instant had better choices, I would recommend it for the quality.

I also tried to use my Chromebook to stream, but that didn't work, since you need Microsoft Silverlight for this service. There are a few quirky things sometimes too - like the sign-in window continuing to pop up even after you've signed in - but I can overlook those, since it's still in beta. I'm sure those will get fixed.

Also, it would be nice if we could have streamed the movies through our Sony DVD player or Wii. I understand the service is already available on some devices like those, and I assume they are working on adding more devices, hopefully including what we have.

I'm glad this free trial exposed me to the Redbox kiosks, and I think I will continue to use those - something I hadn't done before. The Redbox Instant subscription comes with four DVD credits a month, but costs $8 a month. Renting four DVD's from the kiosks directly would be a few dollars less than that. So for me, it's definitely not worth it to continue paying for Redbox Instant. I won't continue my subscription until they add more movies or somehow make the service better than similar ones already out there. I'll stick to the kiosks for now, and use Netflix, Amazon Prime, or Hulu Plus for streaming movies and TV shows.