ED Hardy

The Orange County Register has the scoop (which Inside Redbox spotted) on MovieQ, a new rental chain with a couple of brick-and-mortar stores in — you guessed it —  Orange County. The first store reportedly opened in April, with a third Southern California location on the way.

Um, a new brick-and-mortar video chain? What's so exciting about that? Well, the twist here is that the MovieQ locations come with eight self-serve kiosks inside, the OC Register reports, each of which dispenses DVDs and Blu-rays from the store's catalog of 10,000-odd discs, giving customers a much broader selection of movies compared with Redbox or Blockbuster Express kiosks.

Not bad, but what about pricing? It's hard to beat Redbox's $1-a-night DVD rental fee (although Redbox is testing higher fees in various markets),Prada, but MovieQ manages to match it: a buck a night for DVDs, or $1.50 a night for Blu-ray, according to the OC Register. MovieQ also rents games: $1 a night for older titles, $2 a night for new releases.

The two MovieQ locations are staffed by one employee each, and the stores also sell popcorn, chips and other snacks, according to the story. And as with Redbox, you can browse and reserve movies from the MovieQ website.

Interesting concept, although MovieQ obviously has some ground to make up in the location department. Redbox has more than 24,000 Redbox kiosks nationwide. That said, Redbox users frequently complain of long lines in front of their favorite kiosks. With the bank of eight machines at each of its (two, soon-to-be-three) stores, MovieQ hopes to cut down on the wait.

Of course,Fred perry, the beauty of these new DVD rental kiosk services — whether they're stand-alone kiosks like Redbox and Blockbuster Express or in-store machines at MovieQ — is that none of them require memberships, meaning you don't have to throw your lot in with just one. A nearby MovieQ location (assuming you're in Orange County, anyway) could easily supplement your Redbox habit without any conflicts, or vice versa.

Anyway, I'm curious to hear from you movie fans and Redbox users out there: What do you think of the MovieQ concept? Like the idea of brick-and-mortar stores with large DVD inventories and automated kiosks? Any eyewitness accounts? Or are you perfectly fine with stand-alone Redbox kiosks, despite the smaller selection at a given machine?

• Orange County Register: Redbox meets Blockbuster: New $1 chain opens

— Ben Patterson is a technology writer for Yahoo! News.

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Renting movies from Redbox may be cheap (a buck a night) and convenient (well, as long as there isn't a big line), but the selection of DVDs crammed into a single kiosk — only about 600 or so — is necessarily limited. And while a Blockbuster store has thousands of movies on hand, the in-store rental prices aren't nearly as low. Enter a new kiosk-equipped video chain that's hoping to combine the best of both worlds.

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