Vending Machine Dispenses Movies
Forget candy bars. Now you can rent a videocassette from the cafeteria vending machine. Or least Micom Systems employees can, since the installation of an 8-foot-wide machine two weeks ago at their corporate headquarters.
The Video Vendor machine, just one of several designs on the market, uses a robotic arm to retrieve and replace cassettes, clearly visible through the display window. Creditworthiness can be established with a credit card; the transaction itself requires cash.
“This is like the jukebox,” says Micom recreational administrator Sandra Edwards, who OKd the installation by Video 24, a 10-month-old company handling distribution of Video Vendor machines in Southern California. Despite the idiosyncratic requirements of the machine (its video monitor tells customers to “Stand close and don’t back away or lean sideways until robotic transport begins to move”), Edwards says she has not had to call Video 24 for service or repairs during the first weeks of operation.
The machine was installed at no cost to Micom, a Simi Valley-based manufacturer of data communications products. Instead, Micom is receiving an undisclosed percentage of the gross for its recreational fund, according to Edwards and Danny Janssen, chairman of Newbury Park-based Video 24.
Janssen, a former schoolteacher and songwriter (“Little Woman” and “LA, LA, LA” for Bobby Sherman in 1969), says he had developed a prototype of a fancier video dispensing machine before he met the Video Vendor inventors and decided to distribute their product instead.
Janssen is using a Fullerton-based video consultant, J. Lahm Consultants Inc., to select and update the video inventories and to choose potential sites. For now, they’re focusing on relatively protected environments such as employee lounges, rather than public locations, the Video 24 chairman says.
(As a policy, Video 24 does not include X-rated videos in its inventory, and screens other offerings with the companies where the machines are to be located. “The companies we work with are family-oriented companies, and we go over titles with them,” said Ernie Stephens, who is coordinating Video 24’s installation at Micom.)
Janssen also predicts that the vending machines will whet the interest of major motion picture studios.
In theory, studios could purchase and stock the video dispensing machines, establishing a new, direct distribution link to large audiences. The machines might enable these motion picture companies to circumvent--to some extent--the video stores, thereby entering the video rental business directly.
The rental business has always vexed the studios, because copyright law protects a store owner from having to share any of the rental fees with the cassette manufacturer (typically a studio). Once a studio sells a videocassette, the new owner is free to give it away or rent it out, so long as he stops short of using it in a public performance, under existing law.
At Micom, however, the machine’s chief advantage is convenience. Most of the company’s employees commute long distances, according to Edwards, who approved the installation because “it adds to the employee benefits.” Since the machine’s installation, Edwards’ teen-age son has begun drawing up a nightly list of rental requests. “It’s the first time he’s been impressed with something I do at work,” Edwards says.
