Blockbuster Video Now Has Just One Store Left On Earth (apnews.com) 129
Cutting_Crew writes: After the last remaining Blockbuster Video store closed in Australia on March 31st, there is only one remaining left on earth. That location is in Bend, Oregon and seems to be a thriving location, where they write out membership cards by hand and the system is rebooted using floppy disks, apparently only something one person, the general manager, knows how to do. If you are wondering how there could be still blockbuster videos open since they went bankrupt back in 2010, the remaining stores left open were independent franchises and were separate from most of the other corporate stores, thus not part of the bankruptcy. There was also an Onion video before they even went bankrupt that's pretty funny. I remember getting a membership way back in late 90s and new releases were $8 per night. Even then, that seemed way too expensive. What are your most memorable (good or bad) memories of your local blockbuster?
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What's all that aboot, eh?
I wish there were more video stores (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I wish there were more video stores (Score:5, Informative)
Check and see if there's a Family Video near you, they're still thriving.
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Yup one near us, it isn't bad at all. New releases are a bit more expensive than Redbox but they will actually be available, those will drop to recent releases soon enough and be a bit cheaper than redbox, older stuff is $1 for a week and a nice chuck of that is rent one get one. There also appears to be a section of kids movies that are just free, but I haven't actually looked into what is actually going on.
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they have adult videos that may of keep blockbuster alive longer.
Re: I wish there were more video stores (Score:1)
I bet it's all documentaries along with the first few seasons of the Simpsons.
Re:I wish there were more video stores (Score:4, Informative)
I miss being able to get a pizza and a movie to watch over dinner.
We haven't "cut the cable" (I'm 52) so in our household we just press the "On Demand" button on our remote and rent the movie from the Cable TV Company.
If you don't have cable, you can also rent most any movie from Google Play Movies & TV or iTunes (either via streaming or a download that expires at the end of the rental period).
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Look at Uncle Kajiggerbucks here, paying a gazillion denaro to watch a fuckin' movie.
From the OP -
I remember getting a membership way back in late 90s and new releases were $8 per night.
Eight bucks in 1999 is twelve bucks today, Anonymous Coward.
Cost to rent Incredibles 2 on Google? Four bucks.
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The prices Google shows are way too high, You're lucky to find something for $4. I just use the library, cheap and enough selection and doesn't eat into the internet quota of 250 GBs.
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The prices Google shows are way too high, You're lucky to find something for $4.
I find these sorts of comments pretty funny.
This post is about Blockbuster.
Back in the 80s and 90s a VHS tape rental at Blockbuster was around $10-$12 (inflation-adjusted to 2019 dollars) and was due back "the next day before 6pm". Today, you can rent a movie on Google from your couch for 48 hours for $4, with no need to rewind or return it to the Blockbuster - But the prices Google shows are "way too high."
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Well for $9 per month you can stream a whole bunch more, so yeah, Google, 'The rent is too damn high'. Honestly I do my content a year after, always playing catch up and avoiding the crap. Most of the best content is pre-nineties, content just ain't good enough any more to justify the price, so people don't care as much, watch it when it comes out or a year latter, who cares. Seriously for five dollars, with no packing or hardware and with an unknown life for the supplier, $5 is the buy and not the rent pri
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I guess I never used Blockbuster, used to usually rent 7 movies for 7 days for $7 while avoiding the new releases. Google charges $4+ for old movies. Meanwhile, Netflix is $12 a month for unlimited, there's various free options including Youtube,, used DVD's go for a dollar and there's the library.
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(Leaving aside the fact that if you arrived at Blockbuster at 8pm on a Friday everything good was gone.)
My point was if you want "the Blockbuster experience" in 2019 - The ability to rent reasonably new stuff - You can do that from Apple, Google or your cable provider, for less money than we paid at Blockbust
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I miss waltzing through Tower Records every other Sunday, just browsing the acid jazz and downtemp sections, spending my afternoon listening to a dozen CDs and then buying half of 'em.
Granted it is more convenient to just hit the Amazon MP3 app at any time, the feeling of walking around the store is unmatched.
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Decades ago I took a date to Tower Records. Dinner and perusing Tower Records. That was the date. I bought her a CD of Phil Collin's Hello I Must Be Going as a gift. I married her, and the CD is still in our collection, so it all worked out OK.
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No doubt half the magic was hearing good music in the 90s. .. *shit music for an hour*
I remember when I was a kid I put a blank tape in the radio by my BBS computer and it took over a week to catch them playing Nirvana's Heart Shaped Box even though it was the hot shit of the moment.
It didn't stop them from "This is K-RADIO-STATION MUSIC: *best 3 seconds of good song*... *best 3 seconds of good song*...*best 3 seconds of good song*... kicking off another 30 minute ad-free ROCK-BLOCK!!!!
"Internet Killed the Video Store..." (Score:1)
Sing it: Internets Killed the Video Store... [youtube.com]
Or: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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I doubt very much any physical video rental store ever had a selection available as large as Netflix streaming. The truth is your memory is faulty. Even if you exclude the giant portion of Netfilx's streaming library that is stuff that I doubt anyone anywhere ever watches is a given year they still have more selection than your old video store.
What you are actually experiencing is the paradox of choice. See with NFLX you have yet to make much investment in watching anything until you do it. The main th
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Re:I wish there were more video stores (Score:5, Informative)
I miss video stores. I miss them almost daily. Streaming has no selection at all.
Quite the contrary. In order of film selection size, from least to greatest (based on the latest numbers I could find in a quick search), here's how the various services stack up (unless otherwise noted, all of the below are streaming services):
Blockbuster (retail): 500-1K*
HBO: 815
Hulu: 2.3K
Netflix: 3.8K
Amazon Prime: 17.5K
Vudu: 18K
Redbox On Demand: 20K**
iTunes Store: 65K
Netflix (DVD): Over 100K
Even if you're doing the apples-to-oranges comparison of Netflix subscription vs. video store rentals, Netflix has the better selection by a wide margin, but once you start comparing today's video rental streaming services against the video store rental services of yesteryear, you're talking about orders of magnitude more films being available today. Not only that, but you can instantly rent a movie from any of the aforementioned services for less than the cost that you were paying at Blockbuster 20 years ago, which just goes to show how horrible the situation back then really was.
* You may see mention of Blockbuster stores having 8,000-10,000 films. That's either the 9,000-ish that their now-defunct streaming service had or the number of cassettes/discs they had in inventory (most of which would have been in the stacks of new releases that lined the walls of every store), not the number of unique titles to choose from. The numbers in the list above reflect the best estimates I could find for the actual number of unique titles available at any given store.
** The only numbers I could find were 7K at launch (i.e. several years ago) and 20K as an estimate provided by an executive for what they expected to have in their catalog by the middle of 2018. I went with 20K, since I figure it's closest to the actual number, but I wanted to be sure to disclose that uncertainty.
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B. Streaming services have a lot of garbage. I'm not interested in just parking my butt in front of any old garbage. My time is valuable, and if I'm going to spend any of it in front of a screen, it's going to be to watch and enjoy something good.
C. I'm a member of Netflix's DVD service. It's not nearly as bad as their streaming selection, but it's not great, either. A sample of the DVD's I'd like to get but they ha
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C. I'm a member of Netflix's DVD service. It's not nearly as bad as their streaming selection, but it's not great, either. A sample of the DVD's I'd like to get but they have permanently unavailable: "Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)", "Gung Ho (1986)", "Flash Gordon (1980)", "Kids in the Hall: Brain Candy (1996)". My video store had all of these. If they didn't have something, they'd buy it so that I could rent it.
Again, you’re comparing apples and oranges. Netflix isn’t a rental service. They aren’t selling access to a deep and comprehensive catalog. It’s instead supposed to have an ever-churning supply of entertainment for a subscription fee, most of which you won’t care for, but enough of which you’ll like at any given time to make it worth your while. But if you look at actual rental services...
- Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978): available to rent for $2.99 [justwatch.com]
- Gung Ho (1986)
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I used to take my daughter to Blockbuster and Hollywood Video when she was younger. But when the RedBox kiosks started popping up everywhere we when to those instead. Found them to have a good enough selection at a price neither of the traditional video stores offered and the late fees were much better. After S25 in fees accumulated Redbox says keep the movie it's yours! I've had late fees in excess of $85 at Blockbuster.
Combined with the Great Recession and the convenience of reserving a disc before headin
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Netflix's DVD service isn't bad, but it takes a week or so to get something that I want to see.
No, it is bad. That's why I dropped it several years ago. At first I was able to get to see 2 movies a week, assuming I watched them the night they arrived. Then the response time dropped and the delivery was taking twice as long. The last straw was when over half the discs were arriving damaged and unplayable making it take 2 weeks to be able to watch one movie. Cheaper and easier to just go to Redbox at that point.
blockbuster video is older than some slashdotters! (Score:2)
eh
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Nostalgia plays a big part (Score:2)
It's more of the experiences you have while going to the video store that makes it so much different (not better or worse imho). I'm 38, have been going to video stores since I was 5 (mostly for video games) and worked at a Hollywood Video for my first real job from 16-17 years old. It was the best, and worst, job ever. They actually ran To this day I have dreams of that place and trying to work the PoS machines, remember hotkeys, etc.. they used PCAnywhere to get into the network, it was tied to the guest
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Watch out! Got a badass over here!
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Idk, this guy essential drove Blockbuster into bankruptcy once they repaid his $20. Sounds like he's to blame for just about everything.
But honestly a "real man" like Chuck Norris would have demanded interest too. And received it.
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Similar late fee problem here -- except it was for a movie that had been rented (and forgotten). Returned it weeks before and finally wanted a new rental. The late fees came to something like $96. I laughed at them and offered to buy the movie instead ($40 range). They declined. They wanted their ridiculous late fees.
The conversation got a bit heated (me :) and they reminded me they had my credit card on file and would just charge it anyway. I declined. Excused myself to "think about it" and go find another
Re:They let someone else use our account one time (Score:5, Informative)
Similar late fee problem here -- except it was for a movie that had been rented (and forgotten). Returned it weeks before and finally wanted a new rental. The late fees came to something like $96. I laughed at them and offered to buy the movie instead ($40 range). They declined. They wanted their ridiculous late fees.
They're not charging you for the price of the physical DVD. They are charging you for the lost revenue they could have been making renting it out to others while you were holding on to it. If they only expected to make $40 per copy of a movie, of course they would go out of business (sooner than they did) - they aren't even covering their overhead at that point. Every rental business is predicated on making more than the cost of the item back by charging more than it is worth if you had bought it outright.
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Still it's fundamentally punitive because any competent business owner who's lent out a movie, could be making $30 a week on it, and hasn't got it back would surely buy another copy. Nobody with any sense would willingly forgo that opportunity cost, just because they might make it back in fines later.
I'm pretty sure we've been sitting on the same set of netflix dvds since before our kid was born. Has netflix really left some poor sucker waiting 6 years to borrow this discs after I'm done? I doubt it.
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I'm pretty sure we've been sitting on the same set of netflix dvds since before our kid was born. Has netflix really left some poor sucker waiting 6 years to borrow this discs after I'm done? I doubt it.
Apparently you only rent new titles. I currently have 110 titles in my "Saved" list on Netflix. It's been much higher in the past. I've deleted a lot from that list. Though there have been a few that they did replace eventually. However I know that several have been there for over 10 years now. So no, they don't replace older titles when they don't get returned.
It can take years for that to happen in some cases. Pre-2005 Doctor Who disks don't appear to get replaced once they run out of them. I've been w
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Re:They let someone else use our account one time (Score:5, Insightful)
So let me tell how your cool story actually reads:
Similar late fee problem here -- except it was for a movie that had been rented (and forgotten). Returned it weeks before and finally wanted a new rental
I was irresponsible and failed to honor my obligations as set forth in the rental agreement. I put my late return in the box and hoped I'd get away with it. Even though I really should have known better; because its not like they don't track these things..
The late fees came to something like $96. I laughed at them and offered to buy the movie instead ($40 range). They declined. They wanted their ridiculous late fees.
I don't understand anything about how the licensing works for commercial video rental media or the profit model the video rental industry operated on at the time. My ignorance is so cool right guys?
The conversation got a bit heated (me :) and they reminded me they had my credit card on file and would just charge it anyway.
I threw a tantrum but the clerk in the store remained clam and did his job like a professional.
I declined. Excused myself to "think about it" and go find another movie to rent (not). Went to the back of the store, called the bank, and cancelled the card in question.
Rather than accept and pay the debt I legitimately incurred; I moved to skip out on the bill. Also I stupid because the fact is they still have my name and address and they could easily slam my credit and send the debt to collections. Which would and very well may have cost me a lot more than $96 in long run..
Handed them my non-rentals on the way out the door (why should I put them back?). Let them know as I was passing to go ahead and close the account and "good luck" getting any charges through. They were bankrupt within a year.
I continued to behave like a dick, and probably only avoided debt collections and negative credit report issues because the company was already struggling and probably short staffed. Thanks at least in a very small part to my shitty behavior a business owner lost their franchise. Yeah! me!
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I remember they asked my dad for his social security number and it somehow sent him into a PTSD freakout in the middle of the video store.
First he lectures the pimply teenager about the risks of sharing his SSN and that it should only be given to employers and the IRS. Working himself into a frenzy that finally comes to a head when they cashier awkwardly responds "th-the system needs it to enter..." Then his whole face turned, veins swelled and pumped angrily across his forehead.
It would take about a minut
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If you are talking about Blockbuster still, and not other indy video stores, I can affirm that they did not need the customers' SSNs for their system. I always simply wrote in PRIVACY ACT in the SSN space whenever I would get a new membership at any video store (including BB), and they didn't care one way or the other. They didn't get paid anywhere near enough to care about something like that.
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Interesting. This is the kind of dickish behaviour I normally see associated with ACs. Did you forget to check the little box before posting?
Now go fuck yourself you worthless shame of a human being.
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How many decades ago was this?
Duh. (Score:1)
Thats the Store Captain Marvel crashed into, Disney has mandated it remains open, OR ELSE!
There were better options (Score:4, Interesting)
I grew up in Philadelphia and we had a chain of video rental stores around here called West Coast Video. When Blockbuster came around, WCV really stepped up their game with more foreign and rare stuff you couldn't get from Blockbuster. I ended up going there more than Blockbuster.
Then I discovered Movies Unlimited, another store that catered to more obscure stuff. They even rented Laser Discs!
But I do miss video rental stores daily. I think they were great. Some cheese steaks and a DVD from West Coast Video made for a nice cheap date at home.
Back in the day... (Score:2)
...we called it Buttblocker.
Never rented a thing from there, as we were blessed with some great independent video stores in the area. Did a lot of Laserdisc rentals as well.
For purchases, they were typically made at Tower. A friend of mine was the laserdisc buyer for one of the local locations. He kept it stocked with good stuff.
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Never rented a thing from there, as we were blessed with some great independent video stores in the area.
I know someone who owned a mom and pop store. Porn is what kept them in business, as the profits from it were high enough to cover their costs and make a living. They carried the regular stuff as well but would not have made a go of it without the adult movies.
Did a lot of Laserdisc rentals as well.
local locations. He kept it stocked with good stuff.
We also had a place with a great LD collection, almost the whole back catalogue at one point.
Truth in advertising (Score:2)
I dig the signs that say "Best Selection" and "Best Releases". That's technically true since they have no competition anymore (at least per physical stores).
It would be like after the apocalypse if you were the only dude on Earth, and if you happen to meet a lady, you could rightfully claim you are the "best bachelor available".
Or even now, "the best Slashdotter outdoors".
I used “choices” video (Score:2)
On Earth??? (Score:5, Funny)
That tells me there may be more stores 'out there' some place and we just haven't found them yet.
First sentence? Editors? (Score:5, Informative)
After the last remaining Blockbuster Video store closed in Australia on March 31st, there is only one remaining left on earth.
Was it the last remaining Blockbuster Video or not? If there is still one remaining, then the one closed on Australia was the next to last remaining Blockbuster store...
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Yes, that sentence needs work, but don't hold your breath waiting for M'Smash to fix it. English is like his penultimate language, only followed by his non-compiling C code.
The last remaining Blockbuster in Australia closed on 31 March. Now, there is only one left on the planet.
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Yes, that sentence needs work
No it doesn't. People just need to know how commas work.
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Do you understand how commas work? The editors do. If you think you understand commas then why would you proceed to ask a question about only a fragment of the sentence?
The only question to ask is: "Was it the last remaining Blockbuster Video in Australia", to which the answer is, yes.
Is it that one? (Score:2)
Is it the one that has Mel Gibson's jockstrap, donated by James Corden?
I realized they jumped the sahrk (Score:3)
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I'm not familiar with Blockbuster's service, but if the individual disks were sent to you with a postage paid return envelope, and you were dropping them off, then you were doing them a favor. If dozens of people dropped of disks, and they could put them in a box and ship them for a single box instead of dozens of disks, they may have been breaking even or even coming out ahead. The cost of the store rental was probably a bonus, and they may have hoped to get some late fees from other people to offset the c
Blockbuster was pretty weak (Score:2)
In my early teens (Score:1)
I would wander around blockbuster with my buddies while holding a laptop while it burned the DVD we had just rented. Sometimes we would copy up to 10 DVD in a day.
Need some help here (Score:2)
When /. was young... (Score:1)
... this headline would be an April Fools joke.
What about the Moon (Score:1)
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RIP Blockbuster, Rot In Hell (Score:2)
One time, many many years ago (2002ish), my ex and I rented a movie as we did rather infrequently. No problem, dropped it back in the slot a few days later, several hours before it was due. No big deal, right?
About two months later, I get a notice from some collection agency that apparently I owed Blockbuster something like a buck in late fees, but that the collection agency was tacking on something like $20 to collect on it. No prior warning, no call, no letter, no nothing. I was especially pissed beca
I found Run Lola Run at Blockbuster (Score:2)
Rented on a whim. Good lord that is an awesome movie (and soundtrack)!
Eventually saw it at a theater (saw Princess and the Dragon the same night, different theaters, epic German movie night).
Also stumbled upon Floundering at Blockbuster. Tis a good movie to stumble upon, but rather incoherent.