The main issue we had with rental stores back in the day was the late fees. You'd return something on time and it'd sit in the return bin for hours until an employee scanned it as returned. If they happened to scan your movie in at 12:01 am the next day, it was "late".
It got so back that my parents used to physically hand an employee the movie and ask them to sign the receipt with a date and time when it was returned. And IIRC part of the story behind netflix was after the founder complained about late fee policies some blockbuster manager told him "if you don't like it build your own blockbuster store", so he did.
Other issue was if you wanted to watch something that wasn't a new release. The rental stores usually had full shelves of the movies that had just come out, but if you wanted to watch something a few years old it got tricky. That was where netflix really shined: they had a massive variety of stuff way beyond what any movie rental store had. Local stores sometimes had a better collection of old movies than blockbuster stores since they didn't cycle through inventory nearly as much, and when DVDs came out that helped some because they took up less room on the shelves.
Well speaking of shelf space now, it's no longer needed!
Imagine walking into a brick and mortar, buying membership and being given a USB stick, small size, fits one film, maybe up to three and paying stick rental instead. Plug in to a computer, pay for films, download, watch, film deletes itself after a full viewing.
I'm sure a small proprietary bit of code could do that. Even more draw to it, if the player software is stored on the stick. Just plug it into a TV.
Edit: should mention, this is how rental stores should have behaved when netfkix/redbox peaked their noses out. Sure the back end would be a bit more intricate (server racks stored on site with films), but the far larger library they could hold and move to digital would have seen them compete longer atleast until digital bandwidth got larger for home downloads and then streaming as we have now. They could have been doing streaming long before netflix was dreaming of it
There were several attempts to do something similar to that over the years. There was a competing format to DVD very early on called DIVX (not to be confused with the video codec) that had the ability to restrict viewing to a certain number of times or a certain period of time. There was also some research into making DVDs with a coating over the reflective layer which would start to oxidize after being exposed to air so they wouldn't play after 72 hours or so. Neither amounted to anything.
I suspect the reason they didn't do something like what you suggest was more due to licensing than anything. "Digital distribution" of movies has different licensing terms than DVDs and VHS tapes. Any any attempt to do something like that would have been sued into oblivion.
Oh I am fully aware of the licensing issues, but we have those licensing issues resolved now for streaming, so all it took was a bit of negotiation work, likely not too dissimilar to what netflix did initially.
I occasionally wondered about the complete opposite, a streaming service that needs no licensing. There are special laws regarding lending physical media. My idea basically a giant Redbox but in a warehouse somewhere. You pay $.50 to rent a blu-ray player in the warehouse, which is legal. You pay $1.50 to rent a blu-ray, also legal. A robot arm places your rented blu-ray in your rented player which you control remotely.
The main issue we had with rental stores back in the day was the late fees. You'd return something on time and it'd sit in the return bin for hours until an employee scanned it as returned. If they happened to scan your movie in at 12:01 am the next day, it was "late".
It got so back that my parents used to physically hand an employee the movie and ask them to sign the receipt with a date and time when it was returned. And IIRC part of the story behind netflix was after the founder complained about late fee policies some blockbuster manager told him "if you don't like it build your own blockbuster store", so he did.
Other issue was if you wanted to watch something that wasn't a new release. The rental stores usually had full shelves of the movies that had just come out, but if you wanted to watch something a few years old it got tricky. That was where netflix really shined: they had a massive variety of stuff way beyond what any movie rental store had. Local stores sometimes had a better collection of old movies than blockbuster stores since they didn't cycle through inventory nearly as much, and when DVDs came out that helped some because they took up less room on the shelves.
Well speaking of shelf space now, it's no longer needed!
Imagine walking into a brick and mortar, buying membership and being given a USB stick, small size, fits one film, maybe up to three and paying stick rental instead. Plug in to a computer, pay for films, download, watch, film deletes itself after a full viewing.
I'm sure a small proprietary bit of code could do that. Even more draw to it, if the player software is stored on the stick. Just plug it into a TV.
Edit: should mention, this is how rental stores should have behaved when netfkix/redbox peaked their noses out. Sure the back end would be a bit more intricate (server racks stored on site with films), but the far larger library they could hold and move to digital would have seen them compete longer atleast until digital bandwidth got larger for home downloads and then streaming as we have now. They could have been doing streaming long before netflix was dreaming of it
There were several attempts to do something similar to that over the years. There was a competing format to DVD very early on called DIVX (not to be confused with the video codec) that had the ability to restrict viewing to a certain number of times or a certain period of time. There was also some research into making DVDs with a coating over the reflective layer which would start to oxidize after being exposed to air so they wouldn't play after 72 hours or so. Neither amounted to anything.
I suspect the reason they didn't do something like what you suggest was more due to licensing than anything. "Digital distribution" of movies has different licensing terms than DVDs and VHS tapes. Any any attempt to do something like that would have been sued into oblivion.
Oh I am fully aware of the licensing issues, but we have those licensing issues resolved now for streaming, so all it took was a bit of negotiation work, likely not too dissimilar to what netflix did initially.
I occasionally wondered about the complete opposite, a streaming service that needs no licensing. There are special laws regarding lending physical media. My idea basically a giant Redbox but in a warehouse somewhere. You pay $.50 to rent a blu-ray player in the warehouse, which is legal. You pay $1.50 to rent a blu-ray, also legal. A robot arm places your rented blu-ray in your rented player which you control remotely.