If you don't watch videos at home often enough to justify a Netflix or Blockbuster by mail account, but you balk at the rising price of individual rentals at your local rental place, have I got a deal for you:


Low-cost DVD rentals via vending machine at your favorite grocery store or other convenient location! Just $1 (plus tax) per night! I love this business model. The vending machine cuts way down on the overhead for renting movies in terms of floor space and staffing, so the price is cheap. You put it on a credit card and are automatically billed just a dollar a day for up to 25 days (after which the charges stop and the disc is yours to keep).

Granted, the selection must be limited. You'll still need to frequent your local video place (go independent!) for anything other than new releases and a few family favorites. But if you skipped some big blockbuster in the theaters and want to see it when it comes out on DVD, redbox is likely to have it.

You can even browse selections and reserve your video online at www.redbox.com to guarantee that your selection will be in stock when you arrive at the machine. You can't use a coupon code for a free rental on a reservation, but hey, it's only a dollar.

And you can return the video at any machine in the network. So if you're taking a trip and using your laptop to watch movies in route, you just need to make sure that there's a redbox somewhere near your destination.

I've only encountered a couple of minor frustrations -- a movie I was eager to see was out of stock the first few times I tried to rent it, and another movie I wanted to see disappeared from the rotation before I got around to it. The worst part is that I've wasted a few hours of my life watching worthless drivel that I never would have bothered with at full price but was suckered into because it was only a dollar. But if you keep your standards in place, it's a good deal indeed.