AUTOMATED VIDEO TELLERS TAKE MOVIES TO MARKETS
With video stores now occupying space in nearly every mini-mall that has gone up in the last two years, it’s hard to imagine how the renting of taped movies could be made any more convenient. But Group 1 Entertainment, a new Los Angeles company, and Diebold Inc., an Ohio firm that began building safes and bank vaults 127 years ago, are going to try.
Diebold, now the nation’s leading manufacturer of automated bank teller machines, will build and install about 2,000 automated video machines nationwide for Group 1 during the next 12 months. The agreement is said to be costing Group 1 $36 million.
The first two video tellers, trade-named the Movie Machine, were installed in Los Angeles area locations earlier this week and are scheduled to begin operation today. One is in a Ralphs supermarket in Brentwood; the other is in the Russell’s store in the downtown Security Pacific Bank building.
By the end of the year, 150 Movie Machines will be operating in hotels, markets and high-traffic centers of large businesses, and the rest will be in place by the fall of 1987.
Brandon Chase, president and chief executive officer of Group 1, said his company had been working on its own design for a video machine but decided to contract Diebold because of the company’s expertise with automated bank tellers. Diebold has a 45% share of the automated bank teller market and the highest record of reliability, according to Chase.
Chase said Diebold is guaranteeing that the video vendors will be operational more than 98% of the time and that service will never be more than two hours away. Diebold has 2,700 technicians working out of 390 locations in its bank service network, and the Movie Machines will be added to their service routes.
“They are guaranteeing 98% up-time, but they have had more than 99% up-time on their bank tellers and that equipment is more sophisticated than ours,” said Chuck Hartman, Group 1 executive vice president.
The Diebold personnel will only work on the electronic components, Chase said. Group 1 staff will shuffle the inventory each week.
There are other video vending machines on the market, but the Group 1 order will more than triple the total number. The Diebold version is the only one using “off-the-shelf” automated bank teller equipment.
When fully loaded, the Movie Machine will contain 378 tapes. The front panel of the machine displays 40 titles, each one numbered just like the racks of pretzels in your hotel vending machine. You can buy two tapes or rent up to four by inserting your MasterCard or Visa card in a slot and punching in the appropriate numbers. Depending on the day, rental prices vary, ranging from $1.50 to $2.49. If you make a mistake, or change your mind, the machine will give you 10 minutes to put the tape back and start over.
If the movies displayed on the front panel don’t appeal to you, there is a “browse” function and a video display monitor that will allow you to scan the list of other movies in the machine. But Chase said the inventory will always be dominated by the latest and most popular films on the market.
Once you’ve punched in your order, a robotic arm inside will electronically search out the right tapes and deliver them to a slot in the front of the machine. A printout receipt tells you how much you’ll pay per day per tape (after five days, they’re yours and the retail prices will be debited to your charge-card account). Total time for each transaction, depending on how far the arm has to travel to get your tape, ranges from 16 to 23 seconds.
In returning the tapes, you go through the same procedure. The arm retrieves the cassette and finds an empty bin to store it in.
Hartman said that when all of the Diebold machines are operating, Group 1 will be the biggest single buyer of videotapes in the country. He said the company will buy more than 750,000 tapes in the month preceding the installation of the last 2,000-plus machines next fall. Altogether, there will be nearly 1 million tapes in circulation at any given moment.
The tapes will be individually coded and controlled from a central computer in Group 1’s Sunset Strip office. Chase said that they will be able to inventory the Movie Machine tapes at any time and adjust for demand.
Hartman, acknowledging the rapid changes going on in the video industry, said that the machines have been designed to handle 8-millimeter tapes, if that format becomes a market force. It can also be converted for compact discs.
In any event, the video business is expected to grow from its current $12.7 billion annual pace to $20 billion by 1995. In that dizzying economic spin, Hartman said, the Movie Machine figures to be a safe entry for the next few years.
If not, there are going to be some pretty snappy-looking used automated bank teller machines on the market.
HENRIK WHO?: Producer-director Robert Enders, who collaborated on several heady plays and movies with Glenda Jackson, read our tale the other day about the faith that TV networks and movie studios are placing in young, not always wisened, executives and called to share his own anecdote.
It seems that Enders, Jackson and writer-director Trevor Nunn were interested in collaborating on a film version of Henrik Ibsen’s play “Hedda Gabler,” which Jackson was then performing on stage. Enders took the idea to one of the major studios, which was headed by his former agent.
Enders said the studio boss said he liked the idea, but wanted him to meet with one of his production executives, who turned out to be young and earnest and . . . well, here’s the rest of it:
“We had a nice talk and he said, ‘All right, what have we got here?’ ”
“Glenda, Trevor Nunn and I would like to do ‘Hedda’ as a movie.”
“Hedda Hopper?”
“No, ‘Hedda Gabler.’ ”
“Who wrote that?”
“You don’t know?”
“No.”
“Ibsen.”
“What else has he done?”
“You’re kidding. You’ve never heard of ‘A Doll’s House?’ ‘Peer Gynt?’ ‘Ghosts?’ ”
“Well, who’s his agent?”
“What agent! He’s been dead since 1906!”
“I obviously don’t have the benefit of your education.”
“You never went to high school?”
Enders eventually got “Hedda” made independently. It was released in 1975, and Glenda Jackson got an Oscar nomination out of it. Enders hasn’t run into the studio executive since, but wherever he is, he’s one of the old-timers now.
He’s got to be pushing 40.
