Imagine you arrive at the airport, and you're greeted by a bright orange kiosk that offers you movies and TV shows for rent. Prices are pretty standard, about $3.99 or $4.99, depending on the movie. Sounds pretty good for a long flight, but who has time to stand around a kiosk and spend half an hour or more downloading a movie?
Fortunately, this is no ordinary kiosk, according to its maker. A startup with the cutesy name Digiboo is placing these kiosks in several hundred airports as we speak. Digiboo works via interfacing with a corresponding app on your smartphone or tablet. At the kiosk, you pick your movie and pay for the transaction. Then the app downloads your movie.
Here's the kicker. Digiboo claims its encrypted movie files download at ultra-high speed, allowing an entire film to transfer to your device in just a few minutes. Many airlines offer movies-on-demand on their flights these days, but those films are often displayed for multiple patrons on a single screen, limiting viewers' choices. Not to mention those flights that have no screens at all. Digiboo differentiates itself by providing a full, fast download prior to your flight.
That means that once you're onboard, you don't need an Internet connection to watch your flick.
Fast Company says that Digiboo's kiosks are able to offer such fast downloads thanks to a dedicated Wi-Fi router that works "significantly faster than most Internet networks provided by airports." The file size for an average movie is between 1 and 1.5 gigabytes. Digiboo says its super-fast routers will transfer 1.3 gigabytes in an astonishing time of less than three minutes.
Many airports in the midwest already have Digiboo kiosks, with the company expecting to place 2,000 more before the end of 2016. The Digiboo app is available for iOS, Android and Windows devices.
