Redbox

There’s nothing like getting the family together in the living room, pushing a button to raise your flat-screen TV out of an ImportAdvantage TV lift cabinet and watching your favorite film on DVD or in 3-D. The question we ask, though, is how did you rent your favorite movie in 2010? If you’re like most people, you probably didn’t get it from a brick-and-mortar movie rental store. It seems that they are things of the past, for now.

In a new study from the NPD Group, standalone movie rental kiosks, i.e. Redbox stations, surpassed the traditional retail store in the U.S. last year for movie rentals. As far the total market for movie rentals goes, Netflix still has the “lion’s share” of rentals, taking up 41% of all rentals by the 3Q of 2010. But now kiosk rentals take up another 31% of the market, leaving about 27% of the market to retail stores. That means that only one out of four films rented in 2010 came from driving or walking up to retail shop, perusing the walls of DVDs, picking one out, standing in line to rent it and driving back home.

This is a drastic change in the movie renter’s behavior, as early last year Netflix was in a dead heat with retail rental chains. Redbox’s increased presence really only took a bite out of the retail shops, and not yet out of Netflix. Blockbuster, who tried its hand at subscription movie deliveries, filed for bankruptcy protection in 2010, effectively being “finished off” by Redbox. Although Blockbuster’s last-ditch effort to survive is to now mimic Redbox, not Netflix.

The study by NPD Group only looked at physical movie rentals, not streaming services or subscription or video on-demand from cable providers. Nor did it consider digital movie rentals from places like iTunes Amazon or Vudu.

So how did you bring films into your home in 2010? Did you get one from a red kiosk after grocery shopping, or saunter out to your mailbox to look for a red envelope or head down to the blue movie store on the corner and pick one off the wall? Share your story with us here.