Paramount No Longer Delaying Movies for Rental from Redbox

I’ve written on numerous occasions about the DVD rental delay period that Hollywood planned to institute as a means to try and increase DVD sales. From all the way back when it was just an idea I never understood the logic that people would buy a DVD they wouldn’t have otherwise just to avoid waiting a month to rent it. Back in early January is when Netflix and Redbox began with delays that were essentially being forced on them in order to survive.

It now appears that at least one studio has come to its senses. Paramount is going back on this plan and will no longer have a DVD sales-only period as they have come to a new deal with Redbox. Warner Brothers, Fox, and Universal currently still hold back their DVDs from Netflix and Redbox for a month while they have a deal with Blockbuster that allows them to rent during that period. According to the research done by Paramount they found that Redbox was actually helping and not hurting.

There were two conclusions we came to…There hasn’t been a cannibalization of DVD sales from Redbox, and Redbox was allowing us to expand our business and ultimately make more money

Hopefully Paramount is just the first of them to go back on this idea that clearly hasn’t generated the results they seem to have been looking for. While the practice has been annoying as I suspected I have just considered the later dates to be their official releases meaning I’ve yet to feel that I’ve been missing out on something. I certainly didn’t buy a single DVD or Blu-ray for a movie just to see it a month before I could rent it.