I'm not sure what your economic situation is, but I feel that $5 is pretty reasonable - at least in the US.
Remember going to Blockbuster and then discovering the movie you wanted wasn't in stock? Along with the 2nd and 3rd options in your mind? I don't know about you, but I went home empty handed several times. (Yes, I had already gone through the greatly limited back catalog of interesting movies at all my local movie stores).
Yeah, but then you have to go get in your car, drive to the corner store, get out, wait in line, browse to find your movie, pay, get back in my car, drive back home. Ugh!
I know I know, #firstworldproblems ... but some markets like where I live in Orlando, FL, driving is a pain in the arse (not a walkable city), so I just pony up the $5 for the digital rental to save me the hassle.
Do you ever buy groceries? Or do you have a personal assistant who does all that stuff for you?
Maybe you don't buy groceries, but I do. I need to eat, so I buy food from a grocery store. Conveniently enough, my local RedBox is located at my local grocery store. There's always something I can buy there to restock my refrigerator or panty. And if I wanted to watch RedBox movies, it'd be very convenient because I could pick it up there, along with some food.
If driving to your local grocery store is such a pain, you might want to re-evaluate your choice of city to live in. I've lived in a bunch of different places around the US and never seen a place where just getting to the local grocery store was that much time or trouble. (Work, sure, because the commute can be long and rush-hour traffic congested, but not the grocery store.)
The nearest RedBox is only a 5-10 minute drive away. But renting that way still usually involves making a special trip to either pickup or drop off. Not really worth it to save $3 most of the time. I use RedBox but it's a very occasional thing--especially as I still have a minimal Netflix DVD by mail subscription.
"Back in the day" Redbox didn't exist. :-D I've gone to Redbox and have the same problem.
I feel that queuing up a guaranteed watching experience from Amazon is worth the hassle of an extra few bucks compared to getting in my car and driving somewhere. (Yes, I assume I could walk or ride my bike. I've never actually been to a nearby RedBox so I don't know how far it is.)
There is the option of hopping online to check the specific RedBox you'd be going to, to see if there's a copy and if available, reserving it for yourself.
Still possible for it to not have a movie you want, but at least you'd know that before leaving the house.
I think the biggest failure of RedBox is that people don't seem to realize you can complete the entire transaction online and reserve the movie. I can reserve a movie Friday morning, then drop by the grocery store Friday night to pick it up along with whatever I need for dinner. So easy, and I get to watch in BluRay quality for $2!
What isn't reasonable is the difference in cost between different formats. SD should be the same price as HD, 2D should be the same price as 3D, etc. At least that's what I say.
If you're OK with having a price tag and sharing restrictions on digital content in the first place (most likely involving some kind of DRM), why not let them set different prices on different versions of it?
I'm on the fence myself. I dislike DRM in principle, but movies and TV shows need to be funded somehow, and I hate ads, so I'm happy to pay a reasonable price.
I feel the same, however the way I see it, the price you pay is to access the content, the delivery medium should be up to me (within reason - I'm not expecting a bluray or dvd release without having to pay shipping costs etc).
Personally I am paying for the experience of seeing a movie in the theater, and I don't like 3-D. Last weekend I wanted to see Resident Evil. The local theater has seven 3-D showings times, and only two 2-D showings. If a theater is only going to mostly offer 3-D showings, I might go of the price was the same. Since I'm not interested in paying a premium for 3-D, I simply won't see the film if there isn't a 2-D option. If it is reasonable to not offer the product I want to buy, then so be it.
SD & HD I can see being the same price but 3D takes way more effort to create than 2D.
I found that BBC sell HD content for [~40%] more - which to me is crazy if it's more than a few pence more, all the people are paying for at the sale end is the cost of a little more storage. In a way the SD should be more as you have to transcode it, they're filming it in HD already.
Remember going to Blockbuster and then discovering the movie you wanted wasn't in stock? Along with the 2nd and 3rd options in your mind? I don't know about you, but I went home empty handed several times. (Yes, I had already gone through the greatly limited back catalog of interesting movies at all my local movie stores).