Okay, yes, if you have a video store of that caliber, then maybe there is vaguely some kind of light point to be made in favor of video stores. But you know how many people have that kind of store available?
Ignore 4 Star and go down to the Blockbuster instead, which is what 99% of people have available to them. You’ll pretty quickly be in the “Fuck stores, yay Netflix” camp.
Video killed the radio star.
Glad I wasn’t the only one thinking that.
That is exactly my problem when I had Netflix. Between the time I queued a movie and I had it in my hand, I would lose interest in watching it. I’ve just started renting again from Zune and Apple.
What’s strange is that Blockbuster et al used to have huge selections back in the VHS days, but as time has gone on they’ve quite dramatically reduced their inventories; newly made Blockbusters are made like ill fitted clothes, with half empty shelves filled with nothing but new releases with lots of space in between them and almost no old videos.
If you still have a Hastings their video selection is relatively large… but Hastings has devolved into a ghetto retailers. Most of it’s stores are in various states of disrepair, are dirty, most customers are ghetto retailer demographics, and they are almost always empty. Hastings survives only because it services weird markets in smaller commuter towns which otherwise aren’t large enough for a big box retail store like B&N or Best Buy.
Even with Netflix streaming it’s not the same because the whole family can’t gather around the computer in the office while eating pizza (yeah, I’m a luddite, I don’t sling my PC video to my TV).
NetFlix streaming works on the 360 and PS3 … and I think Wii as well (?). You can totally gather around the TV. Assuming you have a console of some sort and with kids in the house you probably do.
Yeah, that was my experience as well. I started renting VHS videos back in the 1980s. I was living in Berkeley, California, and there were numerous small, independently-owned shops that tended to have very good collections. When I moved away to more franchise-dominated cities, I had to start using Blockbuster instead. They were okay to start; not as good as an independent shop, but serviceable. But then as Enidigm says, they proceeded to get worse and worse; more copies of the latest hits, and fewer older titles of any kind. By the time I first tried Netflix, I was already soured on the Blockbuster experience, and I never looked back
Back in the 80s and 90s I lived in TLA video stores in Philadelphia. They had a decent, adequate stock of the latest releases. But their specialty was…
Anime, back when no one had or had heard of anime
Bollywood and Hong Kong cinema back when no one had that.
Cult movies
Independent film
Foreign film (and I don’t mean the latest middlebrow release from the UK or sexytimes fluff from France, I mean stuff from Russia, South Africa, New Zealand before anyone had heard of Peter Jackson, Central and South America, lots of politically charged stuff)
Gay and Lesbian film
Silent film
pre-70s exploitation black film
and of course, porn
It was just amazing. The staff were of course hardcore movie wonks who could remember, recommend or find anything, they hosted movie festivals, they had an art house screening theater, all kinds of stuff.
When I went to…hrm, not Blockbuster, I think my first mainstream video store was Errols, the blandness and lameness by comparison was depressing.
I was so happy to finally get Netflix and NEVER have to go into my local Blockbusters ever again. Over priced, fighting over a horrible return policy, constant battles over late fees that were not supposed to be charged…good riddance. (our 2 were notorious for screwing up and charging late fees–confirmed by several friends that worked there)
Yup, between netflix and PPV and on demand, why waste time driving to a store?
And since I don’t get out to the movies as much as I like, as soon as a new movie comes out, I just add it to my queue and forget about it until it is released on dvd.
And since I don’t get out to the movies as much as I like, as soon as a new movie comes out, I just add it to my queue and forget about it until it is released on dvd.
Haha, that’s funny. I do that as a defensive measure in case I don’t get out to see the movie in the theatre. If I forget, it’ll show up at my house eventually…
When I was a teen, every sleep-over started with a stop at Blockbuster to pick out a couple of videos and pick up some over-priced snacks. It was a ritual. That was pretty much the only reason I ever went, though.
…and it ended in pillow fights.
The Blockbuster in my area closed a while back and it was definitely kind of weird. The combination of Netflix, Cable VOD, and Red Box really did spell the end for the brick and mortar rental stores but it still feels a bit odd. For a period of time the video rental store was a part of our culture. It’s a bit like the loss of the Soda Fountain shop, though that was probably far more tragic, as the loss of the video store is really mostly a good thing.
Now that I think about it the death of the Arcade is actually probably a lot closer to the death of the Soda Fountain shop.
Never been a Blockbuster customer myself. I promised the owner of the small, local rental shop years ago that I’d never rent there, and I’m keeping my word.
Granted, that little local store closed long ago, but he still has a shop the next town over. I don’t go there as often as I once did, because I have far too many movies to watch as it is. Plus, Netflix and all that… But it’s reassuring to know it’s still there.
Blockbuster is the only rental shop left in this town. And we’re the second-largest municipality in the entire state (still only 20,000 residents, though, which is probably a village out in Cali).
Pretty much a village in a lot of states. Heck, even my little town has more people than that.
Actually, it’s more like 19,000.
Burlington, the biggest “city” in the state, only has 39,000 residents.
We’re the second least-populous state, after Wyoming.
Jeezus. I knew we had small (population-wise) states. I didn’t know they were THAT small. US States By Population - WorldAtlas
The SF bay area is like 10-15 Wyomings/Vermonts combined.
I’m thinking a professional sports team is probably out of the question, huh?
We almost got an AHL team a few years back, but that fell through.
And we technically have a professional basketball team, the Vermont Frost Heaves, but the Premier Basketball League is hardly the NBA.
Oh, yeah, and the Vermont Lake Monsters, the short-season, Single-A affiliate of the Washington Nationals. A few Major Leaguers of note have passed through there, including Orlando Cabrera, Milton Bradley, and Jason Bay. Though that was when they were the Vermont Expos, and affiliated with Montreal.
Back in the 80s, we had a succession of several Double-A affiliates, a couple of them hitched to the Seattle Mariners, including the Vermont Mariners, whose 1988 team included Ken Griffey, Jr.
I don’t really miss Blockbuster, which used to be two blocks away. The RedBox that inexplicably closed outside my building’s convenience store a month after BlockBuster left was a little harder to take. Hollywood Video managed to make it another year, but it closed up, too. I don’t really miss any them; in fact, the only video store I REALLY miss is Blast-Off Video, which had a HUGE collection of really, really obscure videos (The infliced “Holy Mountain” on me, scarring me for life), but I’m Ok with them going, too, because I haven’t had a VCR in 5 years.
I think that as it stands, Netflix on demand is going to kill RedBox in the next 3-5 years unless Netflix drops the ball or RedBox drops their price. I do think, however, BluRay can be a real gamechanger-- BluRay quality flicks are obviously harder to deliver via broadband, but the relative space available to hold them physically versus the percentage of the public actually capable of playing them is a pretty tough ratio to work out at this point.
They haven’t gone under yet, but are in reorganization bankruptcy for the second time in three years and are closing about 1/3 of their remaining stores (about 800 of 2400) as part of that. In some areas of the country they’re completely gone. They used to have close to 5000 locations, so they’ve been shrinking for awhile.