Kiosks

Redbox made good on its promise back in April to roll out video game rentals across its network of kiosks, announcing that 21,000 of its 27,000 kiosks nationwide will offer a mix of games and movies starting Friday. The company, which has rented more than 1 billion movies since introducing its service in 2003, had been testing game rentals for two years at 5,000 of its kiosks. It found that the average revenue of kiosks that rented games as well as movies was 10% to 15% higher than machines that rented only movies.

In its quest to transform a metropolis built around freeways into a land where bicyclists and sport utility vehicles can amicably share the road, Los Angeles will soon reach another benchmark - a citywide bike-share program. At a news conference Thursday with Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and L.A. Clippers basketball star and cycling advocate Caron Butler, executives with Southern California-based Bike Nation announced plans to begin rolling out their bike-share program in downtown Los Angeles in April.

American Airlines recently completed a radical makeover of its lobby at Los Angeles International Airport, a project that eliminated the counters that separate ticket agents from long lines of passengers. In place of counters, American Airlines installed banks of self-serve kiosks, a total of 36 machines, where passengers can check in, get boarding passes and pay for on-board extras. Although American Airlines' filed for bankruptcy in November and has called for 13,000 layoffs, airline officials say the lobby makeover was not a way to cut back on staffing.

Warner Bros. and Redbox have reached a multi-year deal that reduces the wait for new movies available through the retailer's popular red rental kiosks. The studio said it will make newly released movies available to Redbox within 28 days of the DVDs and Blu-ray discs going on sale, starting in January. Earlier this year, the Time Warner Inc.-owned studio instituted a new policy that all DVD rental outlets must wait 56 days from the time the disc goes on sale at retail outlets Wal-Mart and Best Buy until consumers can rent them.

Dell Inc., which has been pushing its computers into more retail stores, said it would close its 140 shopping mall kiosks in the U.S. Dell now sells computers and other devices in more than 10,000 stores around the world, including Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and Best Buy Co., and the kiosks may be losing some of their novelty. Round Rock, Texas-based Dell began opening the kiosks in 2002 to boost sales of notebook computers.

We've often wondered what would happen to the pay phone -- that relic of a time before cell phone domination.  Will they disappear? Will they be kept around for those times when your cell phone has died? Will they be transformed into something more useful? One potential solution comes from New York City, which launched a pilot program Wednesday that turned some of the city's 12,000 pay phone kiosks into Wi-Fi hot spots. " We are taking an existing infrastructure and leveraging it up to provide more access to information," said Rahul Merchant, the city's chief information officer, the Associated Press reports.  The city has already converted 10 payphone kiosks in Manhattan, Queens and Brooklyn into Wi-Fi hot spots and more of these mini-experiments are planned for the Bronx and Staten Island.

Travelers arriving in the United States can now use automated kiosks at Los Angeles International Airport to go through immigration and customs without standing in line. Officials on Thursday unveiled the kiosks at four LAX terminals where federal officers process passengers from arriving international flights. Three are in the Tom Bradley International Terminal while Terminals 2, 4, 5, and 7 have one each. Cristina Gamez, a spokeswoman for U.S. Customs and Border Protection, said the devices scan passports, immigration documents, photos and fingerprints of passengers who have qualified for the agency's new Global Entry Program.

Pepsico Inc. has bought a minority stake in a maker of food vending carts--or kiosks--which the soft drink company plans to use for some of its fast-food operations. Terms of the deal with Carts of Colorado Inc. were not disclosed. The company announced Thursday that it had entered a partnership with Pepsico, the parent of Taco Bell, Pizza Hut and Kentucky Fried Chicken.

At airports, supermarkets and big-box retailers, "customer service" in recent years has meant self-serve -- aided by touch-screen kiosks. As digital kiosks become more user-friendly and capable of handling more complicated tasks, healthcare providers, fast-food chains and other businesses say trading face-to-face encounters for face-to-monitor transactions improves service and saves money.

Google Inc., seeking to expand into markets beyond the Web, filed patent applications for digital billboards and in-store kiosks. The billboards would display promotions based on where consumers are located and what products are in stock in surrounding stores, according to two patent applications the Mountain View, Calif.-based company filed last year. Merchants would submit ads through Google, the most frequently used search engine.

After successfully challenging established players Blockbuster and Netflix in the DVD business, Redbox is now going to attempt to rival one of the nation's most powerful companies: Ticketmaster. The operator of 38,500 kiosks in grocery stores, drug stores and Wal-Marts across the country launched a ticketing business Wednesday with Philadelphia as its first test market. Its second market will be Los Angeles, where the company plans to enter the ticketing business in early 2013.

One of our favorite ways to find a last-minute discount ticket to a Vegas show is with Tix4Tonight. You've probably seen them - they're the guys with the kiosks that line both the Strip and Fremont Street. Here's how it works: Tix4Tonight sells tickets at up to half off the box office price to over 100 top Las Vegas shows every day - more than any other discount ticket broker in Las Vegas. Most tickets are sold for shows happening that day, but there are also a handful of shows Tix4Tonight sells in advance.

We've often wondered what would happen to the pay phone -- that relic of a time before cell phone domination.  Will they disappear? Will they be kept around for those times when your cell phone has died? Will they be transformed into something more useful? One potential solution comes from New York City, which launched a pilot program Wednesday that turned some of the city's 12,000 pay phone kiosks into Wi-Fi hot spots. " We are taking an existing infrastructure and leveraging it up to provide more access to information," said Rahul Merchant, the city's chief information officer, the Associated Press reports.  The city has already converted 10 payphone kiosks in Manhattan, Queens and Brooklyn into Wi-Fi hot spots and more of these mini-experiments are planned for the Bronx and Staten Island.

"John Carter's" journey into Redbox kiosks may be as complicated as a flight to Mars. Walt Disney Studios has decided to not sell its DVDs to any rental outlets, including Redbox, Netflix and Blockbuster, until 28 days after they go on sale. Disney previously offered its DVDs to Redbox the same day they went on sale at retail stores and online. The policy change began with the studio's release of the Japanese animation movie "The Secret World of Arrietty" on May 22, a studio spokeswoman confirmed, but has gained widespread notice this week as it is applying to the high-profile flop "John Carter.

MINNEAPOLIS - There are a lot of screens on which to watch new movies: TV, laptop, tablet or smartphone. But until now you needed a TV signal, a disc or a movie-streaming Internet connection. Not for long. This week marks the debut of airport vending kiosks that rent or sell movies that can be watched in-flight on a Windows PC. The rental service, from Santa Monica-based Digiboo, is being introduced at a time when consumers are shifting away from movie rentals to online movie streaming.

Universal Pictures has decided not to join forces withWarner Bros.in that studio's war with Redbox. Universal, the studio behind "Safe House"and this weekend's animated release "Dr. Seuss' The Lorax,"on Thursday announced an extension of its deal with the DVD rental kiosk company through August 2014 that will maintain the current 28-day wait from when DVDs go on sale until consumers can rent them from Redbox. The news comes two months after rival studio Warner Bros. said it would only sell discs to Redbox if it agreed to double the length of the so-called rental "window" to 56 days.

Redbox is hooking up with Verizon Communications Inc. as part of a major step forward to compete with Netflix Inc. in both the digital and physical worlds. The company famous for its ubiquitous red DVD rentals kiosks announced Monday that it would form a joint venture with telecom giant Verizon to create an online movie subscription service. Redbox also agreed to spend up to $100 million to acquire the Blockbuster-branded DVD kiosks operated by NCR Corp., its largest competitor in that business, adding about 9,000 machines to its existing base of 35,400.

American Airlines recently completed a radical makeover of its lobby at Los Angeles International Airport, a project that eliminated the counters that separate ticket agents from long lines of passengers. In place of counters, American Airlines installed banks of self-serve kiosks, a total of 36 machines, where passengers can check in, get boarding passes and pay for on-board extras. Although American Airlines' filed for bankruptcy in November and has called for 13,000 layoffs, airline officials say the lobby makeover was not a way to cut back on staffing.