Sep. 27--Best Buy is trying out some new DVD and game rental and trade-in kiosks in Dallas and Austin, and while the retailer is not publicly divulging locations, one of the kiosks recently appeared at the Irving Market Center store. So I went to try it out.

While the selection of rental titles was slim, selling my old stuff was a breeze.

I took a used copy of Too Human for Xbox 360 and a used DVD of the Schwarzenegger classic Predator.

When you select the option to trade in a used disc, the system lets you scan the bar code on the packaging, then tells you how much your trade-in is worth. You can decline the offer and leave, or accept it and proceed.

I was offered $7 for my game (which, judging by the eBay listings for used copies of Too Human, seemed a more-than-fair price) but just 75 cents for Arnold's opus, so I opted to keep the movie.

After that, I had to insert the game disc into a slot, where the machine presumably checked for scratches.

My disc passed inspection, so I was then prompted to enter my e-mail address on the touch screen to create an account and then swipe both my credit card and my driver's license.

A few seconds later, the machine spat out a voucher, and I popped the game box into the mailbox-like slot next to the kiosk and toted my voucher up to the cashier.

I now have a $7 Best Buy gift card.

I didn't test the rental features, but I did browse the selections.

The menu of game rentals was beyond useless -- just 11 older titles in all, such as last year's version of Madden -- but the movie rental database was decent, even including Blu-ray versions of some films, such as The Dark Knight and Watchmen.

It was $1 a day to rent DVDs and $2 for Blu-ray movies.

But the trade-in feature is the big draw. It's simple and fast and seems to give a reasonable price for your used material. Ideally, you'd be able to leaf through a listing of the items that other customers have traded in at that kiosk so you could purchase them.

But that would add complexity, and Best Buy may want to build up a larger catalog of used titles before it starts selling them back to customers.

After all, one of GameStop's biggest challenges in its used-software segment is keeping enough inventory in stock to satisfy demand, and the Grapevine-based company has been at it for years.

In fact, I'm surprised GameStop hasn't jumped on this kiosk technology already. It would be easy to scatter these machines all over shopping malls and Walmarts and anywhere else with high foot traffic, just as Redbox has done with its movie rental kiosks.

And it will be interesting to see how Best Buy expands its use of the kiosks.

For now, if you want to try the technology for yourself, it's definitely worth a test drive.

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