Research shows that 2.4 million people rent over four DVD’s per month and another 7.6 million people rent between one and three DVD’s per month. These figures clearly show that the demise of the rental DVD is a long way off.

It is not that the actual DVD rental market is fading away; it is more likely that it is the way that consumers go about renting their DVD’s that could be changing.

In Liverpool, the European city of Culture, they have been trying out something new. Automated DVD rental kiosks. These sound as if they should be in Japan or somewhere similar but the first of these machines was placed in a store in Formby, while the second found its way to a store in Stockport.

The company behind the kiosks is The Movie Booth and they say that since the launch in May, the sales figures and demand has already gone past those that they would have been expected to have seen and an expansion plan is already underway.

“The Formby kiosk has started extremely well, as I knew it would, so we decided not to waste any time in getting the next one set up,” said John Youssef, who is overseeing the deployment of the DVD rental machines in Merseyside. “We hope to launch two more by the end of 2008.”

This is surely a way to go for the future of DVD rental.