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An Ode to Blockbuster and Other [Video Rental Stores]
The Ender
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Welcome to the future of home entertainment technology.
What is this mechanical marvel!?
This is a Video Cassette Recorder, or 'VCR'. This machine will allow you to record your favorite television shows, important news or even cartoons for your children to watch right from your own television onto extremely convenient, book-sized 'cassettes' that you can keep and watch later!
TV guide scheduling will become a bygone relic of a much crueler era in television viewing.
There are so many buttons! And is that a built-in clock? My God, how many thousands of dollars must this machine cost!?
Thanks to outsourcing it's manufacturing to several production firms overseas, JVC is able to offer it's VHS format recorders to you for as little as two-hundred dollars! When you really think about it, that's a mere hundred trips down the road to go buy a sundae from Mr. Walton's general store. And you don't get to keep those sundaes forever, unlike your own personal VCR.
These sort of Nintenga gizmos always spin my head 'round. Will JVC be offering thrifty servants for hire to properly operate the device?
You are in luck! While JVC is not yet offering full time VCR servants, many independent entrepreneurs have already established 'video rental stores', where you can go and not only learn about the machine, but loan out a variety of videos - including entire Hollywood films - for a mere dollar a dozen! One such up and coming video rental store goes by the name 'Blockbuster'; it comes with my personal recommendation.
Hey, wait a minute; why would I purchase one of these 'Video Cassette Recorder' machines when I already have a BlueRay player on my Playstation 3? And why the Hell would I walk down to a video rental store when I can just buy videos while shopping at Wal Mart or, better yet, just watch shows on Netflix?
...Y'know what? You can get off my lawn, now.
So, Blockbuster's been dying for a while (and most of it's competitors have long since vanished). It filed for bankruptcy in 2010, was bought by Dish Network, and then this month it's UK subsidiaries were put into administrative status. I have no idea what that means, but it's apparently Very Bad, and could mean about 4,000 layoffs.
It's hardly surprising, but it's been a shock to me nevertheless: going down to the video store to rent games and movies was a staple of my childhood. A dollar for a dozen on Tuesdays at the local non-Blockbuster generic rental store I don't remember the name of! What a great deal that seemed at the time, and it wasn't that long ago (I guess 15-16 years~). I remember when, to their eventual chagrin, my parents bought Beta instead of VHS because the cassettes were more compact. I recall when DVD was first released, showcased with some higher definition (at the time) footage from Independence Day, and my parents poo-poo'd the medium and stubbornly clung to the VHS machine until it started eating about every second cassette put into it, and the little TV repair shop in town had closed-up shop so they couldn't get it fixed.
I also recall getting into big trouble one day when the video store called and charged my parents like $15.00 because we'd returned about 6 movies without rewinding them.
To my naive eyes, video rental stores seemed like a technological goldmine, and the local owner / manager would always wow my friends & I with some tech stories / knowledge that sounded impressive even if it meant absolutely nothing to us. They were my gateway to gaming as a hobby.
So, I'm throwing-on my rose-tinted glasses and taking a look back at the video rental business n this thread.
What the Hell is a video cassette anyway?
I imagine most people know them by appearance; they aren't that old. These things started the video rental store craze, which was arguably responsible to injecting a lot of interest & capital into the tech sector (...and, interestingly, the adult film industry).
The cassette itself is just a reel of magnetic tape. The VCR uses a combination of heads to record an analog image signal & separate analog audio signal from the TV; the analog nature of the process, which involves the heads in the VCR physically contacting the magnetic tape, is what causes older machines to start 'eating' cassettes as the mechanical parts start to wear.
How did Blockbuster get it's start?
David Cook opened the first Blockbuster in Dallas, Texas in '85. The rental store boom was in full swing by that time; Cook was able to grow his business more rapidly than most of his competitors by identifying what films the local demographic was most likely to rent and tailoring his stock accordingly. He also leaned heavily on what was, at the time, an exploding medium that was in high demand just about everywhere: porn. His Dallas store was not the first video rental space with a 'back room' full of pornography, but that space became a staple of the business model and one that was replicated by just about every large rental store chain to follow.
What was so great about these rental stores anyway?
Speaking realistically: nothing.
Speaking with my rose-tinted glasses firmly in place: the same thing that's great about a good book store. I saw so many damn movies that I'd have otherwise never seen because, hey, I need one more tape or Nintendo cartridge to make an even dozen, and this title sounds fun / scary / action-packed. Yes, most of those films or games were terrible, but that's besides the point! A decent rental store was a giant archive of the best & worst creative endeavors of the time.
Also, my local rental store had a real caramel popcorn machine. You put in a dollar, it popped fresh popcorn, put it in a cap, and then poured fresh caramel over it. Sure, half the kernels were missed and I'm sure it was stupid expensive when you think about what you pay vs what you get, but man, real caramel popcorn.
How / when did it all go wrong?
It's difficult to pinpoint exactly when Blockbuster's fortunes reversed; most rental chains had closed their doors by 2008, with Movie Gallery and Blockbuster holding down the fort until 2010, when Movie Gallery was liquidated. The rental space had been being crowded-out ever since digital distribution became A Thing People Did, but Blockbuster itself seemed to be riding that wave (releasing it's own digital distribution platform, offering a DVD by mail service, eliminating late fees in favor of more progressive & cost effective customer experiences, etc) until at least 2009. Store closures began in mid 2010, and have continued to the present day; there are about 500 total stores left in the United States as of this post.
With Love and Courage
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I understand why, but it's still a bit of a trauma. It makes me feel old to see such formerly common-place things disappearing for good.
The very last thing I rented at a brick-and-mortar blockbuster was, I believe, Breaking Bad: Season 2 Disk 3.
But fuck their 'new release' wall. If a movie has been out for a goddamn year, it is no longer a 'new' release, Blockbuster.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
I used to love that joint when I lived up there. They got me into a lot of cool generas and older movies that I wouldn't have seen otherwise.
3DS FC: 4699-5714-8940 Playing Pokemon, add me! Ho, SATAN!
I never did work at one though, so maybe it still sucked.
My high school friends mostly had their first job at a video rental store. They had crazy stories, some of which I'm not sure I believe, about the crap (...sometimes apparently literal crap) that people put into the overnight video return slot. One of them sometimes spent whole shifts just calling people to notify them about late rentals, and dealing with all kinds of verbal abuse by people trying to bully their way out of dollar late fees.
There were lots of great stories too, though - like the time someone printed-out a placeholder shelf label for 'Super Mario Bros 4', stuck it on the NES rental shelf and continually strung inquiring customers along about when it would next be available.
What the Hell is this 'Beta' stuff?
Beta was the cassette format used by Sony for it's 'Betamax' line of VCRs. It was the most direct competitor with JVC's VHS format, capturing about 20~ percent of the market at it's peak. Like all cassettes, Beta used magnetic tape to capture and/or playback an analog signal; the Beta VCRs had larger heads than VHS machines, which meant that they could capture more detail (resulting in a slightly sharper image), but the early cassettes could only hold about 60~ minutes worth of footage, making most Hollywood offerings out of reach. Sony's product was also more expensive, because they didn't license-out manufacturing, and a few film genres (most notably, the emerging adult film industry) standardized on JVC's format.
The last Beta VCR was released in 1993.
We have an understanding, sir.
Pfft. 'Netflix'. Can you walk into Netflix, and then walk out with your arms full of stuff after throwing down just a couple of dollars? Can you rent a duffel bag with a console, 2 controllers, and 6 games for ten dollars on Netflix, literally feeling all of that bang for your buck trying to pull you to the ground?
Now, some of you will say, "No, and that sounds like a bunch of bullshit to me, I just want to click a button and watch a movie or play a game," and my reply to that will be, "Off. My. Lawn."
And eventually none of them came back... Who is laughing now?
Low blow. Low blow.
The local no-name video rental place I used to go to was owned by a tech enthusiast, and yeah, he'd do the same. "[X] is great, you seen it yet?" "[Y] is awesome, you played it?" "You hear about [Z]? There's a great Nintendo Power article about it..."
And he'd talk about all the various marvels of home entertainment technology of that time. I think my mother referred to him as 'crazy' one time because he suggested video calls would be A Thing People Do in a few years. My mom does video Skype calls just about every day with my stepfather during lunch these days.
I also remember a time where I was sent down to rent a movie during college for the pack of us to watch in the dorms. I rented Meet the Feebles because well it was directed by Peter Jackson (at the time he wasnt very popular but I had watched Dead Alive and the Frighteners) so I decided to rent it.
Has anyone else watched that movie? Because that had to be one of the best accidental rentals of all time. Note: There were a bunch of "kids" (ie freshman) in the audience. Needless to say I wasnt asked to walk down to the U Village Blockbuster and rent any movies from there on.
Two words:
Movie. Marathons.
I'm sorry, but cassettes (be it VHS, Beta or any other more obscure format) are the 'Ironman Mode' of movie marathons. There's none of this 'Skip Scene' bullshit; you've got to watch the whole movie - even if you fast forward through some of it, the visuals are still there, and it still takes time. If it ain't a cassette set, it ain't a real marathon.
There you go. One thing VHS has that DVD doesn't.
Yes, I am positing a convenience feature as a drawback. No, of course my rose tinted glasses aren't becoming more and more opaque as this discussion continues; that's just your imagination!
Which DVDs have ruined, by the way!
Also, VHS is the only place you can go watch the original Star Wars trilogy movies before Lucas went nuts.
I also have 1 VHS player that I hope never breaks down because I don't know where the hell I'd ever find another one.
Hells yeah. My parents didnt want to pay that extra money for returning the tape unrewound so they bought a rewinder. Bought something so they wouldnt have to pay fees. And also, you know, tax the VHS player.
I guess in this analogy, Red Box is the freestanding coin operated vodka dispensaries that used to dot Muscovite street corners during the heyday of the Soviet Union. What I'm saying is that I miss the sense of danger I used to associate with hunting down a copy of Clue in a strip mall.
The fuck is 'Laserdisc'?
My God...
Laserdisc was one of the first commercial optical disc formats, first arriving in the late 1970s. It was never popular in Europe or North America, largely due to the high cost of bother Laserdisc players and the disks themselves, but gained traction in Southeast Asian markets.
Among tech enthusiasts, there tends to be a lot of nostalgia for old Laserdisc releases, and a lot of Laserdisc releases are considered collector's items.
I um. May or may not own a set.
I have to say, a Laserdisc in person is quite the thing to behold, and I have to give a world of credit to anyone that can manage to keep one in shape. Scratches over that surface must be a nightmare.
I also liked the Laserdisc cover for Ghostbusters.
EDIT: For anyone who doesn't know, a Laserdisc actually stores data on both of it's sides - there isn't a 'cover' side like on a modern optical disk. Most films would be split 50/50 between the two sides, so halfway through the movie you'd have to flip over the disk (unless you had a more expensive player that could read from either side; then you'd just tell the machine to play side 2 or whatever).
As the format itself goes, okay, sure. But my God. LaserDisc. The name is evocative of everything the future was supposed to offer us. Lasers! Discs! It was like living in 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Very much like living in 2001: A Space Odyssey when you consider that people still used something like a phone booth to talk to their families while they were waiting for their flight at the space port. Stanley Kubrick thought we'd be taking shuttles to the moon by now, and he also thought in this same bright future, we wouldn't be able to imagine a way to do peer to peer video telecom without a kiosk the size of a blackboard. Wrong again, Kubrick! Wrong again.