RedBox

I went to Wegmans this weekend to try out RedBox. I found RedBox pretty easy to use. It has a touch screen that prompts you whether you want to rent or return a movie. (There was a third choice, but I don't recall what it was.) After choosing to rent, you can browse the movies already on the screen, or you can choose to browse different categories (by genre, alphabetically by title, hits). This was all fairly intuitive. The only issue I had with the on-screen display was when trying to go to the "next page" of movie choices when there were multiple pages. Instead of their being a nice little arrow button (like the back/forward buttons on internet browsers), or a "next" button, RedBox has a button labeled "More Titles." It took me a bit to realize this was the button I was looking for, as it looks exactly like all the other buttons on the lower portion of the screen (Help, Start Over, View Cart, Go Back), and was not labeled as I expected it to be.

Not only does RedBox display the movies on-screen, it also has a large poster-like display right next to it for some of the available titles. My mother was with me, and she asked me to rent a movie she saw on this display. I think the large display is designed to catch people's eyes, and let them know about some of the movies they could rent, without requiring them to even interact with the on-screen display. Obviously this works.

My other issue with RedBox was its selection, which is small and consists of only what appeared to be newer films.

~Emily Vukman