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.
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.