Photo by melanie.phung.

WMATA announced on Friday that an retail agreement with Movie Solution — who operates “a new and innovative vending machine that dispenses DVD’s, Video Games, and CD’s all at the touch of its interactive screen” — to rent DVDs inside Metro stations would go into effect this summer. Kiosks will be placed inside Farragut North, Farragut West, Foggy Bottom-GWU, Gallery Pl-Chinatown, L’Enfant Plaza, Metro Center, New Carrollton, Rosslyn, Shady Grove and Union Station.

The DVD rentals — along with trolley tickets, which started going on sale inside the Smithsonian station on Friday — might open the door for other retail options inside Metro stations. Metro’s assistant general manager for planning and development Nat Bottigheimer told the Examiner that the transit agency will “base any future solicitations for retail in our stations on this early experience.” (The two retail licenses will net the agency $880,000 over the next eight years.)

Now, I’d love to show you what the “experience” of using one of Movie Solution’s rental machines is like, but the company’s website is still under construction, while its Twitter feed hasn’t been updated since January and appears to have been left to the spam hyenas. In fact, the only substantive thing about the company on the Internet appears to be this video touting the new releases available at kiosks in 2008. (Oooh, What Happens In Vegas!)

Okay then. Let’s hypothesize that you’ll able to return a movie to any of the kiosks, and not just the one you rented from (which seems like the biggest hang-up for possible customers): will any of you use these mysterious rental machines to pick up a movie on your way?