DVD and Blu-ray rental company Redbox has hit a major milestone this weekend, one billion movie rentals.
As a promotion, the company is now giving away free rentals to users and starting a contest to give away a full Sony Entertainment System.
Redbox, which started a revolution when it began offering DVD rentals for $1 a day via thousands of kiosks, now says users rent almost 10 million movies per week.
The company has 24,000 rental kiosks in the U.S.
Redbox says (via NewTeeVee) the 1 billionth rental was a copy of “Clash of the Titans,” rented from a kiosk in Florida.
Earlier this year, Redbox expanded its business by offering Blu-ray rentals, at $1.50 per night.
Result for: one billion
LG has showed off two new plasma HDTVs dubbed the Xcanvas bobos 42PQ60D and 50PQ60D. The larger model boasts an unprecedented 1,000,000,000:1 contrast ratio and a 600Hz refresh rate.
Both models have built-in USB ports that allow users to playback many file types including WMV and DivX videos.
According to the source, “speakers are built into either TV, each of which is just over 3 inches thick. For efficient energy use, an ambient light sensor will dim the backlight of each set as conditions dictate, and the feature is said to reduce as much as 60 percent of a conventional plasma HDTV’s energy use.”
The TVs are set for release in Korea beginning mid-February with prices equivalent to $1,022 and $1,460 USD, respectively. There was no word on whether the TVs will have North American or European releases.
Result for: one billion
Creative has become the second company to settle with consumers over a class action lawsuit started in 2005 that companies are “misrepresenting the number of files and hours of songs that players could hold” and other exaggerated capacity claims. The other company was Seagate.
The plaintiffs argued that Creative’s definition of a gigabyte was incorrect, which in turn led to false advertisement about the capacities of its players. Creative claimed that 1GB was exactly one billion bytes 1,000,000,000B when it is indeed 1,073,741,824B. Using that logic, the plaintiffs claimed that Creative’s gigabytes were seven percent smaller than real gigabytes.
Creative has always claimed it had no intention of misleading consumers and denies that anyone has ever “suffered” from the way drive capacity was stated.
The new settlement has been made public now and anyone who purchased a Creative MP3 player from 2001 to 2004 can file a claim. Newer players all report that “available capacity will be less… reported capacity will vary” and thus are not eligible.
Anyone who files a claim (the last day is August 7th 2008) can either purchase a new 1GB Zen Stone music player at half price, about $18 dollars, or take a 20 percent off coupon for any item in Creative’s online store.
