Satellite has terrible latency, which means that you can’t do most gaming over it, but that won’t matter for movies. For movies, all that matters is the data rate, and you should be able to get a decent amount of that from a satellite connection.
But the bigger problem with satellite is that it usually has data caps. You might not want to use all you’d need to get an HD or 4k movie.
I remember doing the calculations to find that it was nowhere near enough for my usual video usage, even though the higher bandwidth was attractive.
Redbox fills a niche in the market, just like rental stores still do. Even though everything I viderecord gets posted on YouTube or Vimeo, I still have local people who call me up for a disk copy. I always tell them they can see it free on the Internet, but that’s not enough incentive for them to buy and/or learn to use a computer. After learning which side to put DOWN in the players, they aren’t ready to tackle anything more complex.
Yes, the first thing I tell them when they call me to complain that the disk is blank is to be sure they are inserting it with the label UP.
Alas, I actually needed Redbox for almost three weeks when I moved into the apartment I’m in now. Due to some computer glitch that was never really explained to me because, I believe, they never really understood it themselves, AT&T kept cancelling my order for my Uverse installation every time I made one. They simply just didn’t show up, but I digress.
The point is that I had to depend on Redbox for my entertainment, and it was pretty bleak. Ever since then, I feel a pang of sympathy when I see people at a Redbox. If they had a cup, I’d drop a couple of dollars in it because they are in my mind homeless in terms of home entertainment.
The location where I’m working now has satellite*. At this level of service, you get 10 GB per month at full speed from 8 AM to 2 AM and 10 GB per month at full speed from 2 AM to 8 AM. After that, the speed is throttled–up until a few months ago, the throttled speed was around 20 kilobytes per second, but then they adjusted that speed to around 100 kilobytes per second.
*It is around 200 frigging feet outside of the range that Charter is willing to connect. Otherwise, there would be a 100 megabit/sec uncapped connection.
I used Redbox all the time, back when I didn’t have Hulu, Amazon and Netflix all at the same time (I don’t have cable). This was back when you could spend hours scrolling through Netflix streaming and everything looked terrible and were too impatient to wait for them to send out a DVD. If one of those services doesn’t have it, chances are the only other way you’re going to get it is through pirating or a relatively hefty PPV fee ($3.99 for an episode of GoT?? No thanks). Amazon’s PPV prices are too high, especially for their TV series.
Updating this thread it sound like there is a good chance Redbox may soon no longer exist: