Tuesday, July 19, 2005

A great idea

Unfortunately I did not come up with this idea myself, but I did take advantage of it on my train ride from Montpellier to Nice a few weeks ago. You see, a company in France called CineTrain has decided to set up kiosks at various train stations around the country and rent out portable DVD players and movies to train riders. You simply select the movie or movies you would like to watch, you pay 10-20 euros and they give you a DVD player and headphones (if there are two of you, you can get a second set of headphones at no extra cost). When you arrive at your destination, you drop the DVD player and movies off at the kiosk there and you are done (if there is no kiosk, you can also mail the DVD player and movies back for free, they give you the packaging). A great way to pass the time, especially if you've already read 3 books on your previous train and plane rides...

I feel like fewer people take long train rides in America than in Europe, so maybe this business has better potential only in Europe, but I'm not sure. Also, as long as airlines continue to not provide personal entertainment centers for every seat on many trans-Atlantic flights, I think that this business has potential to expand to flights as well as train rides. Well, only time will tell, but if you're ever on a train in France, check this out...

And if you want more information follow this link. Apparently, they too would like to expand.

5 comments:

  1. ever read mark cuban's blog? This could have been lifted straight from it. That's a good thing. I think. HUGE question, though...you said that the extra headphones were free. okay, that's nice. But was the splitter also gratis?

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  2. heh...yes of course the splitter was free...

    mark cuban's blog eh? what's the URL? hmm, maybe i too can become a billionaire NBA team owner...

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  3. http://www.blogmaverick.com/

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  4. http://www.monstercable.com/productPage.asp?pin=2120

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  5. they've had the dvd players in some US airports for a couple years now

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