Ottawa-based Zip.ca is seeking to take advantage of the demise of Blockbuster Canada, which is winding down its operations by the end of this year. The Ottawa Citizen reported that Zip will be installing DVD rental kiosks in 800 Metro locations across Canada.
The Zip kiosks are already available in many Ottawa-area Metro grocery stores. I visited one recently to try out a DVD rental. The process is really simple: select the movie you want to watch, pay with your credit card and when you are done return it to any Zip kiosk.
If you rent as many movies as we do, you can save a bundle by renting it from a kiosk instead of a local store. For example, we recently rented The Source Code from our local Rogers Video store. The cost was $4.99 plus HST for a 24-hour rental. We also rented The Lincoln Lawyer another new release from a Zip kiosk and the cost was just $2.00 plus HST. Recent releases are an even cheaper at Zip kiosks: just $1.00 plus HST for a recent DVD or Blu-Ray release.
The selection of movies available at a kiosk does appear to be somewhat limited. The Inside Job is on my list of movies to watch but our local kiosk did not have it. Then again even in a store the selection of classic or foreign language films will likely be limited and the public library is probably the best bet for these movies.
