I moved to where I now live in 09, and back then the shopping center where my local grocery store is had a Blockbuster (it has since become a dental office) and everytime I buy groceries I think about the good times I had at Blockbuster growing up. At least once a month we would order pizza and go to Blockbuster to rent some movies. I remember when that Blockbuster went out of business in 2010 and they had a hug going out of business sale with PS2 games as low as 3 dollars and I bought a ton of games that day (wish I had never given up my PS2). I also remember when I was little it seemed every store or gas station had a corner for video rental.
As a kid working at a video rental place always seemed like such a cool job and as a teen, I was busy with sports and when I did work it was at restaurants or temp agencies. I'm curious if anyone had ever worked there or any other video rental?
Also, you think that model could ever work again with some being more interested in physical media? I could possibly see a rental place but they would have to have some other stuff, but I do know some VHS collectors so you could make it work.
No, not at any scale that'd be profitable. Short of the internet collapsing, the inconvenience of having to go to a physical location, the inherently limited selection, and needing to buy the media player for a specific format has killed any chance of it coming back.
> Short of the internet collapsing
Even if that happened, physical media is just too dense and fast for rental to make any sense. A $200 hard drive can hold just about every movie you've ever seen (certainly every good one) and in the future it's just going to get more extreme.
You know how you can buy random chinese gameboy knockoffs that have every NES rom built in? The future will be like that except it'll be every piece of media ever made. We've probably already passed the tipping point where hoarding makes more sense than streaming and people haven't realized it yet.
Zoomers don't know about torrents or piracy. At best the really advanced ones know about illegal streaming sites.
Redbox just died about a month ago, and despite having locations all over, cheaply replaced product, and no staff to pay, they still couldn't hold it down. Opening a physical, staffed location would likely fail.
Part of the experience isn't the convenience of picking product up, it's the inconvenience of having to return it. The modern audience is too spoiled to have to get up and return a disc if they're set on sitting down all night. The ethic just isn't there, and being charged a late fee hurts their feelings.
We're talking about a generation that will rent movies on their phone, to watch over mobile data, while on the clock at work.
Nope, never worked at one. But, like you, have fond memories of the situation. Renting movies, watching them with my parents, way back in the day, and the like.
I remember a family rental store I think it was literally called family rental. They had a back room with porn and I think I went in there one time when I turned 18 but by then internet was a thing so I wasn't their demo.
Anyways, even in the 90s they had the 5 for $5 deal for old and bad movies, any movie with a blue dot sticker is 5 for 5 dollars for 5 days and outside of big releases those were what we rented. Everyone gets a pick, I pissed my family off with wrestling ppv tapes. And no matter what you rented they always give you a small bag of buttery popcorn that never makes it home.
Fucking a, it was magical.
Don't get me started on 2 VCRs and putting 3 movies on one tape in SLP mode.
You still watch wrestling? I do but for me the best time as a fan was 80s through early 00s.
ya man, 80s through early 00s was peak wrestling.
So I mostly watch AEW as my weekly, I do listen to a podcast and watch WWE PLE to keep up but just not a fan of the presentation.
Oh a few years ago I accidently created c/wrestling , I assumed it would have a confirm button but nope it just created it. It's a dead sub atm, I keep wanting to make daily posts like those people on c/funny c/memes and other non-political subs. Because people come for thedonald and kia but to keep people from going back you need cat videos.
But I'm not cut out to be a mod or bother to provide content day in and day out, three decades of being online and I never had any interest other than being shitposter.
I remember our local grocery store had an awesome video rental section. It was like a little store of its own off to the side. Closer than Blockbuster and better prices too so we always went there. You could rent consoles too, and unlike blockbuster they had all the game manuals in the box. They didn't even care if kid me rented R movies.
To this day I still kick myself for not stocking up during their going out of business sale. They had the Earthbound big box with guide - which I'd rented multiple times - and were selling it dirt cheap.
To answer your question, no the thought of working there never occurred to me for some reason.
My local grocery had its own rental shop as well. Now it's a break room for employees to eat their lunch, but I imagine the store from memory whenever I walk by it from time to time.
Same, and I was a cashier there cuz the grocery store was like the only place that would hire high schoolers. The movie wall was the first thing straight in front of the door.
It coming back is an inherently contradictory market. People interested in physical media and collectors want to own it. Even as a secondhand market or a "rent to own" system wouldn't appeal to them because its existence means the most possible damage to the product by it passing through so many hands.
Its certainly possible in a very dense area, where you know you'll have a shit ton of customers come through and can supply rentals of AAA games that you know will get constant movement like sports and CoD. But that's also the kind of location/market that is prime for being the target of black/Mexican kids getting their first foray into gangbanging and crime, stealing the games they can't afford but want badly.
What could work however, is a business similar to how the Asians have karaoke or Net Cafes. A building where you can rent a room that just has a bunch of consoles/PC set up in it with a bunch of games on it.
Imagine being able to pay to rent out a room with your boys to play Halo 2 a massive splitscreen on for the evening, with a constant stream of alcohol/food you can order delivered. While its unlikely you'll get a great selection, I think most of us have a AAA game we love and could enjoy getting wild on a Saturday night renting the experience instead of just the game itself.
Good point. I personally prefer to own.
I never worked there, but my hometown has a rental shop that's somehow still hanging on (despite that the parent company declared bankruptcy and the store rebranded). They somehow have the cash to trade retro games too.
Cool! You go there a lot?
To be honest, no. The place was already pretty run-down even before the bankruptcy, and it's gotten worse since. Like I said, I don't know how they're still in business, though being a general geek shop than a dedicated rental shop probably helps. They also sell books and manga, though it's ruined for collectors by them putting price stickers on the covers.
Redbox was one of the few nationals that had a better idea for rentals (kiosks in front of supermarkets), and even they went bankrupt.
Yea. The only video store I knew of in the last few years that worried had books and live bands as well. Catered to hipsters
I worked for Hollywood video in 2007-2008. This was shortly before they went under and Blockbuster collapsed not long after. We were instructed to destroy all VHS tapes that couldn't be sold for a dollar. Customers begged us to let them just take them but we had managers watching to prevent this.
We couldn't let customers use the bathroom because they kept stealing disks from the DVD boxes in there. Management made a point of only assigning one employee to work on Friday nights. I stuck around in spite of massive turnover, but the whole work by yourself on Friday repeatedly is what finally finished me.
Customers were frequently snotty especially if they came in at Thanksgiving and Christmas. If you did not give them what they wanted instantly they would sneer and say, "I'm switching to Netflix. It's the future!" Some customers were great, especially the prison employees who came in to get stuff for the prisoners to watch, nothing rated R. Usually it was a quiet job to do where hours just passed, but when it got bad it got really bad.
I won't deny there was probably a time it was better, and maybe my area was worse than most, but it did not end well. The movie "Be Kind Rewind" speaks to me in ways that it probably should not.
I worked a a small mom & pop rental place for a few months around 1992, before DVD. Everything was VHS with a limited box of laserdisc that I never saw move. I lived less than a quarter mile from the place. Despite the size of the shop, they were one of the very first to open in the 1980s so everyone had a membership there, and early on my family would have to drive two towns over because they were the only place around. There was also a Domino's pizza directly next door, which was symbiotic for both.
I was hired because I lived close, and they were dabbling with renting out Genesis, NES, and SNES games. Gamestop did not exist yet. I had actually sold them a few games I was done with in order to afford some new ones.
They weren't one of those places who would play movies on a TV to entice people. Their computers were ancient, even by 1992 standards. Every night we'd have to back up the day's transactions onto a 5 inch floppy, through a heavily screen-burned monochrome monitor. They'd rotate between 4 discs, each one groaned and strained from being overwritten hundreds of times.
The work was shit. Nonstop filing tapes onto shelves or tags onto hooks for the adult section. Customers were often rude and in a hurry. If someone had reserved a movie (this system was pen and paper) but the previous renter was late with it, they'd bitch like it was you who personally arranged to fuck up their night.
I can't say it was a magical place to work but it was convenient for me. Eventually a second store called 'Choices' opened in town and it was MUCH larger and had a better selection. That place even had a music section that sold new release tapes. I remember buying 2 Live Crew there because they didn't card despite the warning label.
At that point the small place panic fired half the staff. They hung on for a few more years because a liquor place opened in the connected building, (parking lot mishaps and fights became legendary after this) but eventually a Blockbuster opened in town to counter Choices and it all went under.
Thanks. Very cool story nonetheless. I don’t know why but as a kid I assumed the teens that worked at blockbuster got to sit around talking about movies and video games all day.
Maybe it was at BB. The place I was at was run by cheapskates. It was definitely like that in Gamestop around 2001-2005 as they were expanding all over the place.
I remember renting games when I was a kid. Game renting was how I found out Pikmin was worth playing, just from the box art grabbing my attention.
You know, people nowadays love to throw out sales numbers as to why certain classic games weren't actually as popular as their following would have you believe. But they always ignore the fact that rentals and game sharing were a huge thing back in the day.
Absolutely. Or I would rent a game and invite my friends over or vice versa
I worked in one in South Africa back in 1997, had a blast. Sat on my ass most of the day, watching the Bond movies, all of the Rocky and Terminator films (up until then anyway), playing through the PS1 catalog of games we had. The elderly pajeet who owned it also used to let me take the old movie posters home so my bedroom wall was covered in Robocop, Jurassic Park and Guyver Dark Hero. Best job ever for film obsessed teen 😆
Years later in 2012 my girlfriend (now my wife), got a part time job in the same store on weekends. I hung out with her for safety reasons (white woman working alone at night in SA is not a great idea). She would be at the counter serving customers while I sat in the back studying for my degree.
The place closed down some time in 2015 when the old man passed away. I think it’s a laundromat or something now. Good memories
I once had a college friend who did, He even said he could get me one price for two! "Just ask for roger" he said, 🎵At video barginviiillleee....🎵
Sounds like he enjoyed it
I had friends who worked at one, and yeah it was great. I'd go to the store near close and we'd come home with a garbage bag full of movies and watch all weekend.
But you know what's better? Having any movie I want at my fingertips in 5 seconds. Late fees, driving back and forth, scratched discs/bad tapes, movies that turn out to suck, wasting time browsing the store, etc. etc.
Sorry, I don't miss it that much.
A couple friends still go to the last Blockbuster in existence. The people working there are great. The company also does booths at various geek conventions.
I had a friend at the movie theater, that was nice, but not the rental places.
I don't see it ever coming back. Physical media is hard enough to get anymore. I still collect movies occasionally. They are starting to be less available and TV series are getting rare. I can't remember which but there was a movie recommended on here recently I was going to buy and it doesn't exist physically in the US.
I do know of a movie and video game store that lets you rent about anything still. Then they just put the returned rental back up as used for like $5 off.
When I was a kid the video rental stores were where I spent the lion's share of my time. I didn't have the internet, I didn't have cable, and I was an only child. Blockbuser was good, but I liked the other one better. It was a small regional chain, one that had the 'back room'. They couldn't compete with Blockbuster on stocking new releases or games, but they had a special on Tuesdays where you could rent two 'catalog' movies for 50 cents. They also didn't give a fuck about renting R rated movies to kids, just not anything from the back room. Great times.
I worked at a video game rental store for 4 years. It wasn't blockbuster.
It was actually pretty okay. We didn't have a lot of annoying customers, plenty of repeat customers who would come in to rent a bunch of movies or games, and have fun on the weekend.
I worked right around the transition from VHS to DVD. Although we still kept a sizeable VHS amount. A lot of people at the time felt that DVDs would scratch too easy, sort of like CDs. Where a tape could just be physically taped if it got garbled or snapped, and you'd skip only a second or two of video, whereas a scratch could ruin a whole movie on a DVD.
The biggest part of the job was just the maintaining. Things need to look nice. The movies and games need to be displayed properly. Popular rentals need a few more copies so that it's not out all the time. You had to make sure inventory was there to rent, or made to show that it was already rented with a tag.
Do I think that model could work again? On a small scale yes. But as a big country wide chain like blockbuster? No. That store right now would need a second or third thing to remain afloat. There would be a wall of funko pop, anime and figurines, posters, that sort of thing. And while that kind of stuff was at blockbuster, it was a tiny little spot, not a third of the store like it would need to be now. Look inside a game stop/eb games if there are any near you and you'll see what a rental store would look like. Mostly games or movies, but a lot of extra stuff.
There is a small chance people might get fed up with chasing streaming services to watch what they want to watch, and they'll take going to a store to get it again rather than just continue chasing them on a service, or break down and physically buy whatever tv show or movie they want one at a time and get it delivered like from ebay or amazon. But that's gotta be a small fraction of people.
I think some of the nostalgia of it all had to do with the state of the world. Being a kid in a pre 911 world, you were free to spend money on a lot of stuff. You felt like you could go out and have some fun, maybe it meant being at blockbuster for awhile and experiencing some of the movies or games you liked.
And while I'm waxing nostalgically, Blockbuster is the reason why NES and SNES manuals are rare. Nintendo sued blockbuster saying that the manuals were intellectual rights of theirs, and had to be destroyed, not distributed with the games. So a lot of mom and pop places just stopped handing theirs out with the games so they wouldn't get sued too.
So that's why some of the harder to find games are less valuable than their instruction manuals, and why Hagane in particular has a 99.9% chance to not have an original one at all. It was a blockbuster exclusive game.
Sounds like a lot of fun. I tend to agree with you about trying to do that now. It would have to be like the third or fourth item available
Yeah, once Walmart had bins of movies for $5 it it didn't really make sense to rent for $3.99 anymore, except for the brand new ones where they were still charging $20+ to buy.
The last video rental I saw in operation was about 10 years ago in the grocery/hardware store on a small island that you had to take a ferry to reach. Without cable or internet they had a captive market.
Well that, and Internet speeds were still slow as hell. It took quite a while for a lot of the faster infrastructure to get any kind of reach and coverage, outside of major cities and prominent tech areas.
The good old days of opening several browser windows and go do something else to pre-load multiple parts of a movie uploaded on youtube.
They never should have changed it so you can't buffer a whole video before you play it.
I know you got retro hipsters that would be interested but not enough of them. I have heard that about rural areas where internet isn’t the greatest
Depends on the area. A lot of states are subsidizing fiber installation in rural areas. I suspect it's either to pad the stats on coverage, or somehow it being installed in rural areas first would make it easier to install it in urban areas.
I think for most people into retro media (who aren't just in it to make a buck), emulating the experience is probably enough. For games that could be using an emulator on modern hardware, and for movies or TV that could be just watching old media. Going further you might use visual filters, or maybe actual hardware (with or without mods) in combination with something like a flash cart or ODE.
Physical media itself is arguably the least important part of that equation, and those who do care about it are in it to collect, not to rent.