Redbox's owner files for bankruptcy after repeatedly missing payments and payroll / The company hasn't paid employees in

[Spencer Martin]

5. Same.

Seems they had a pretty good business model for that brief window following the demise of Blockbuster and before the switchover to reliable 4k streaming.

Wife and I have fond memories of picking Redbox Blu-rays with the phone app and then driving over to a machine to pick them up. We'd use the kids' Playstation or Xbox to watch it.

They were cheap, though. About $2 for a Blu-ray disc versus anywhere from $3 - $10+ to rent a new release on one of the streaming services.

There's probably a few people out there who like the price and just like physical media (or don't like streaming services). Maybe some people who live out in the sticks where high-speed internet capable of playing 4k isn't really available. Still, certainly not enough to justify the vast number of these Redboxes that at one time existed everywhere!

They had a good run. It just wasn't meant to last. Technology was going to catch up. They had to have seen this coming.