RedBox Instant by Verizon, Quick Review

RedBox Instant by Verizon, Quick Review

RedBoxInstant-1

I’m going to try and give our readers just a little insight as to what you can expect from this new service. At first announcement I was excited to find out what RedBox Instant by Verizon really had to offer. Could it compete with our favorite streaming services, Netflix, Amazon Instant, or Hulu Plus? Two of those which I currently use by the way. The $8 service includes streaming either a library of free movie, movie rentals, current kiosk movie stock, and to top it off  4 DVD credits per month at the overwhelming number of kiosks around your local area.

Now that I had received my activation code for the free trial period, I signed up and decided to take the weekend and replace Netflix with RedBox Instant in my home. Everything came to a screeching halt! I had to close the app, fire up Netflix and get a couple episodes of LOST in before I subjected myself and the family to a weekend of a service we’re not used to using. I was already prepared for the service to not have any TV shows, as the kiosks never did, other than the occasional full series of a hit show (The Walking Dead). Because of this, our household realized RedBox Instant alone will not work, at least not in its current beta form. Once RedBox goes through the beta period, I would hope to see most of the wrinkles ironed out, and a more complete streaming service to emerge.

Take note that the application will not work on rooted Android devices at the moment. Although, I don’t see this being a permanent issue for the application, since the official RedBox kiosk app is not blocked. So, my solution for the weekend was to install it on my wife’s Android device instead of mine. Thereafter, I casually began browsing through each section of the app, gaining my bearing, and learning how it works. I did notice the RedBox Instant app does have a better feel to it. The UI is nice and gave me a feeling of more control over what I wanted to search out and watch, and even offered rating based options. From my weekend of one-on-one time, movies seemed to stream just fine. No worse than the quality of my experience with Netflix, which is usually above average, based on my connection with my internet provider. One issue I did come across while watching the movie Rango (ya know, that movie where Johnny Depp is a chameleon), if you are midstream watching a movie and you close the app you’re unable to easily resume the flick from where you paused it. To resume your movie you are required to navigate a ‘finish watching’ section. This area definitely could use some work. Also you won’t find the option to stream your RedBox Instant subscription by way of a browser. This could be on their to-do list, as Netflix does this very well right now.

RedBox Instant by Verizon being in beta, is a decent service. Once this service come out of beta, they certainly should have improved on their content, such as adding TV shows. The more content, the happier you make your current subscribers, and bring in new subscribers. Content availability will be my personal deciding factor as to if I continue to use the service. They definitely have their work cut out for them being the new kid on the block pushing to compete against the current established media streaming services. Cheers to RedBox and Verizon for taking on the challenge. Giving us as consumers more options and variety is always a welcome delight! See a few random screenshots below.


RedBox Instant  RedBox Instant RedBox Instant  RedBox Instant

I write a couple things every now and then. I'm glad to have my small corner. My posts will consist of reviews, current news from the Android/Google/Tech world, and maybe my thoughts on a subject for you to agree or disagree. Enjoy!

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