John Harvey, who was appointed chief financial officer of Coinstar Inc. just a few months ago, is quitting.

Harvey previously was CFO of Coinstar subsidiary and DVD rental company Redbox, which is located in suburban Chicago. Bellevue-based Coinstar (NASDAQ: CSTR) said Harvey quit “because of the extensive time his position required for him to spend away from his family.” Coinstar said that he had been commuting between Bellevue and Chicago.

“I’ve chosen to seek opportunities in the Chicago area that will allow me to spend more time with my family,” Harvey said in a statement.

Not every Mom and Pop shop breaks street date, nor do they all have porn.

“Trust Me”, i rent on Fridays(no street date violations), no back room or propped up porn either.

You are very accurate on the fact that the Studios made renting no different than buying a loaf of bread.

The problem is RB priced their “Bread” like it was stale, day old bread(with a shiny Red Wrapper) and that giving away this “Bread” would hamper every other “Bread” dealer that needed to make a profit.

I do rent for convenience and the place I rent from has a far superior selection. I also know that the people running the store are very generous and offer way more to the Community and it’s not even close. RB has not donated a dime to the community, all the while this store offers 6 figure dollars in the form of taxes, donations and wages a year.

The Studios didn’t think of it first(I couldn’t see them all agreeing to share a box anyway) and it does scare me a bit that they definitely hold all the cards when it comes to Digital Vs. Physical.

However, that is moot since RB has hamstrung Digital with a Free to $1 price point. A price point where only the studios would have to come together to eliminate all the middlemen.

I pay $2.49 to $2.99 most of the time at my local store. I figure I save at least 20 minutes vs. going to Redbox and my time is way more valuable to me. I hate lines and time is money. Even if the line is short to rent I’m usually not going to risk the unknown when I’m going to return.

There is a spot for Redbox, but the freebies have already done their damage to the industry.

Redbox’s $1 rental model could curb VOD market
PHYSICAL: SNL Kagen: VOD companies must stay at higher pricing
By Susanne Ault — Video Business, 9/3/2009
SEPT. 3 | PHYSICAL: Redbox’s $1 a night rental model, already perplexing to many studios for hurting sales, also could curb the burgeoning video-on-demand market, according to SNL Kagan.

The research firm questioned in a recent study whether VOD companies could afford to drop their typical $3.99 price to a more competitive $1 price point.

SNL Kagan says that answer is no. VOD companies will have to stay at relatively higher pricing to make their business models make sense. That could leave them potentially vulnerable to Redbox’s extreme value proposition.

At a $1 price tag, SNL Kagan determined that VOD distributors stand to make $0.08 to $0.19 per transaction, taking into account studios’ assumed 70% revenue cut. That would result in a loss on the transaction for VOD companies. However, a $3.99 price point consistently yields a profit for them.

Studios also are unlikely to get on board with $1 VOD rentals, notes SNL Kagan.

At that pricing, and assuming VOD was the only rental choice available, there would have to be more than 8 billion downloads to achieve the expected $8.03 billion in 2009 rental revenue. However, SNL Kagan projects there to be just 1.74 billion total rental turns in 2009.