Soaring RedBox lifts Coinstar profits, planning online streaming service

Video and game rental service RedBox is having a banner year, increasing the Q3 earnings of parent company Coinstar 90 percent, the company announced today in its earnings call.

Coinstar’s RedBox kiosks, located in grocery stores and other retail spots, offer inexpensive movie and video game rentals. The dollar-a-day pricing is part of its appeal, but Coinstar announced plans to raise prices on DVD rentals to $1.20 per day.

The company also plans to launch … Continue Reading

Netflix’s Qwikster game rentals may have short shelf life, thanks to cloud gaming

Netflix today spun off its mail-order DVD business into a new service called Qwikster, which will include mail-order video game rentals. Given Netflix’s immense success with the movie business, you might expect the games rental business to fare just as well.

But this is not the early 2000s, and the game rental service will face stiff competition from what might be one of the biggest revolutions in gaming since the advent of digital distribution: cloud … Continue Reading

Netflix CEO: “We’re gonna thrive on streaming only”

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings said in a conference call to discuss second-quarter earnings that the online-video giant plans to focus on a “streaming only” future after separating its mail-order DVD service into a separate subscription. But that future, Hastings said, will also bring Netflix into many more countries.

“We gained some confidence when we launched in Canada. That blew away our expectations,” he said. “With the strength of streaming only internationally, we got convinced that … Continue Reading

Updated: Netflix expects subscriber growth to slow in Q3

[Update: Added additional information from the company's quarterly conference call.]

Video streaming site Netflix’s recent rate hike has slowed the site’s growth substantially.

The site expects to add 700,000 new domestic subscribers — at the most — in the third quarter this year, which is down from the 1.8 million new domestic subscribers added in the third quarter last year, according to the most recent Netflix earnings report.

The company said it expects subscriptions to … Continue Reading

DEMO: Metabeam brings movie and TV bonus features to your mobile devices and computers

Metabeam is one of 70 companies chosen by VentureBeat to launch at the DEMO Fall 2010 event taking place this week in Silicon Valley. After our selection, the companies pay a fee to present. Our coverage of them remains objective.

According to the Nielsen Group, 3 out of 4 Americans surf the Web while watching TV. The startup Metabeam is launching a new product at the DEMO conference today to take advantage of that trend.… Continue Reading

Roxio brings 3D photo and movie creation to the masses with Creator 2011

Jumping on the 3D bandwagon, Roxio today announced the release of Creator 2011 — the latest entry in its flagship media creation suite, and the first widely available consumer software that lets users create 3D photos and videos.

Indeed, the company appears to be betting big on 3D. According to Roxio, it was the most requested feature among its customers in a recent survey. Roxio representatives demonstrated to me how easily Creator 2011 can turn … Continue Reading

Redbox's $1.50 Blu-ray rentals in 13,000-plus kiosks now, across the US by fall

Redbox, the company behind those now-ubiquitous $1 movie-rental kiosks, has finally announced its plans for Blu-ray rentals. The company is rolling out $1.50 Blu-ray rentals to 13,300 kiosks over the next few months, and it plans to offer them at all of its 26,000  kiosks across the US by fall.

Redbox’s initial Blu-ray titles include “The Book of Eli”, “Green Zone”, and “Brooklyn’s Finest.” As always with Redbox, the selection will differ depending on the … Continue Reading