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.