Where am I going to rent “Breakin’ II Electric Boogaloo” On VHS?
I get some movies, etc. for free; library has some DVDs and also there’s options like my cable’s free on demand (where I got to see Nashville and In Cold Blood; have never seen before) and YouTube on the comp (where I saw all of The Friends of Eddie Coyle not long ago)
BUSH’S fault!
I’ve noticed our local Blockbusters are always empty of customers, even on the old busy times Friday and Saturday nights. The new $1 rental vending machines at grocery stores seem to be getting longer and longer lines.
Do editors actually do any work these days?
It’s easier to discover a title digging through shelves or bins.
Netflix’s organization of titles is lousy and their listing of “new releases” does not list half of what they are adding to their catalog.
So if you know what you want to rent, it works ok but if you want to see something you’d be interested in and haven’t seen advertised, you have to wander around awhile and maybe you’ll find something.
But Netflix has broader inventory of titles than most brick and mortar stores.
I know of videotape rental stores (still in business) with decades of titles (most now out of print). Oddly, they never went into DVD rental. The explosion of releases on DVD means it is unlikely to find everything stocked anywhere and there are titles that go out of print (and then seem to “get lost” at Netflix).
Ultimately I like a big inventory to choose from. But looking at physical shelves gives you an easier chance to discover releases than an incomplete category listing online.
Too big to fail! Rental Stores need our bailout money now! I propose 500 billion dollars to keep these video stores from going out of business! They provide a valuable entertainment factor, and provide jobs in the urban environments that no one else could provide! Bailout now!
Or, let capitalism reign. And everyone ends up winning in the long run.
Video Rental has been dying for a decade. I remember their heyday when rental places used to get VHS movies several months before they were released for public sale. But, that agreement was apparently only for VHS ... and died with the DVD.
Now, its almost cheaper to buy a used DVD than to rent one (They’re about $3 at pawn shops). And, downloading or Netflix is much more convenient for rentals.
The movie rental business is pretty much a relic, and will likely be confined to the porn market from here on.
SnakeDoc
I buy most of mine via Amazon. I get many DVDs for less than $10 including shipping and I do not have to worry about getting hit with a rewind fee if forget to when I send the rental DVD back.
RedBox is good, and it’s cheap.
I liked the local video-rental stores in the ‘80s, as they often had a nice variety of vintage fare... classics, silents, foreign films, old serials, 50s/60s horror sci-fi schlock, etc. Always something fun to discover. But some time in the early-1990s, all the stores around here seemed to weed out all that variety, and concentrate entirely on ‘new releases.’ So, I gave up on them entirely. Haven’t rented anything since those days.
In the past decade, I’ve just been buying discs, so now I have my own library of favorites to tap into any time I want.
The only thing holding up online rental is selection. Once I can get anything online that I can from a store it’s all over, and they know it.
Is it any wonder why they are failing? =
. Why spend $6 at Blockbuster when you can rent the exact same DVD from Redbox for a DOLLAR!
I hope Redbox begins to rent Blu Ray movies in their kiosks.. the sooner the better!
When Wayne Huizinga sold out to Viacom, the service deteriorated and prices increased. Netflix and Redbox were the nails in the coffin.
I just noticed the hollywood video closing. I haven’t used them for years though, I use a local blockbuster.
But it would be no big deal to sign up for netflix. For a while I was on blockbuster’s “get movie by mail, return to store and get another movie”.
Now I do online surveys and earn free movie rentals, plus I belong to blockbuster rewards and get free movie rentals.
When Netflix gets their Wii connection working, I’ll probably start doing Netflix and downloading movies to the Wii to watch. It’s just easier than running to the store.
I can live without Hollywood and Blockbuster. What is sort of sad is the end of the small, indepedent rental store. I sort of miss the act of going into a store like that, talking to the loser Quentin Tarantino wannabe who apparently lived there, and finding little films that I never would have discovered in a million years. I feel the same way about music stores.
Netflix is great when I want to see the latest Will Smith movie. But I don’t really know how the children will discover “Dolemite” under this new system.
One thing that has become indispensable for me is the availability of star ratings by other members of the public (not critics). The correlation of satisfaction and star count is pretty high.
Many movies look good per box description only to find out later that you wasted two hours of your life watching and it only had two stars. If I recall Blockbusters does not readily disclose star count, so renting from them is a crap shoot.
Even HBO on Direct TV has star count on their listings, a great piece of information.