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Most of the mom & pop video stores around where I grew up closed when Blockbuster and Hollywood Video showed up. There was one which survived and it was really cool as far as video stores went. They rented laserdiscs in the 90s, rented DVDs years before the big chains, had piles of games from the NES era to the newest stuff, a sleazy looking porn room with a curtain, etc... The prices were really good too. It was $1.25 for a one night DVD rental, which was really all you needed most of the time, and if you kept it another day it was just another $1.25. I'm also 99.9% sure the owner was a bookie and used the store for money laundering. He was always talking quietly on the phone and writing things in a ledger, and I'm pretty sure renting movies for $1.25 didn't pay for all the store expenses along with his new Mercedes. I think he sold the store sometime around 2003 and it ended up closing a year later because the new owner was a Marine reservist who ended up dying in Iraq after being called up.
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Aug 7, 2017 16:01
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The only video store in town that exists still rents out heavy equipment for construction and maintenance. In fact, I think that's what their business originally was and they just had the floor space for video rentals already. I don't even know if they rent movies anymore.
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Aug 7, 2017 16:04
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We had local chains and Blockbuster. Blockbuster killed off a few of the local places by the early 2000s, only to finally leave some time around 2011. There's one chain of local stores left that survives by being in poorer areas and having tanning beds.
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Aug 7, 2017 16:07
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The_Franz posted:Most of the mom & pop video stores around where I grew up closed when Blockbuster and Hollywood Video showed up. There was one which survived and it was really cool as far as video stores went. They rented laserdiscs in the 90s, rented DVDs years before the big chains, had piles of games from the NES era to the newest stuff, a sleazy looking porn room with a curtain, etc... The prices were really good too. It was $1.25 for a one night DVD rental, which was really all you needed most of the time, and if you kept it another day it was just another $1.25. There was a video store near where I lived until around 96/97. It was a local chain with 4 or 5 locations, but it had a massive space in a strip mall a couple miles from me, it also had a near mom and pop video store selection, sure I wouldn't be able to rent Faces of Death, but I could get some other off-mainstream stuff there. I used to ride my bike down there in summers before I could drive to rent movies and buy CDs. When it closed down the space was split into 3 spaces, one of which became the Hollywood Video. The best part of their policies was that new releases were $0.99/day. It was basically the perfect rental model in my opinion, because when I was at the video store I wanted to watch something that night. None of that Blockbuster attempting to make it seem like 3 to 5 day rentals were a bonus feature.
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Aug 7, 2017 16:11
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When I was a kid, for some time the only place to rent movies was at the scale house a few miles down the highway from town. We called it the scale house because its primary purpose was to weigh trucks, but they also ran a convenience store and video rental. For a while we had to rent the VCR too; God knows what that cost but I guess as long as it's cheaper than movie tickets it was worth it.
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Aug 7, 2017 16:28
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You used to see video rentals at just random stores back in the day. Gas stations and poo poo.
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Aug 7, 2017 16:35
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Yeah the local grocery store in my hometown used to have little playing card-sized laminated cutouts of VHS covers of movies you could rent near the end of one of the grocery aisles. Bring em to the checkout line and they grabbed the tape for you. Not a bad idea
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Aug 7, 2017 16:49
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Randaconda posted:You used to see video rentals at just random stores back in the day. Gas stations and poo poo. I suspect convenience stores used to be a lot more important in daily life before modern fuel economy made them irrelevant. Before Walmart's malignancy pushed it into every town, you'd probably go down to the convenience store a whole lot more to get common items. It's definitely weird to stop in a rural gas station and find a busy kitchen and tables for eating at.
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Aug 7, 2017 16:51
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Randaconda posted:You used to see video rentals at just random stores back in the day. Gas stations and poo poo. I remember the day our little gas station in our hole in the wall town got nintendo games to rent along with vhs tapes. I felt like I never needed to leave town ever again.
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Aug 7, 2017 18:01
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How is Family Video still seemingly expanding? Granted they're only around Lake Michigan but I think they're hanging on.
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Aug 7, 2017 18:04
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Monkey Fracas posted:How is Family Video still seemingly expanding? Granted they're only around Lake Michigan but I think they're hanging on. I know there's a few here in Ohio, and there were some in Kansas 5 years ago when I lived there. I'm guessing it's the lack of competition and the "adult" section.
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Aug 7, 2017 18:07
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Iron Crowned posted:I know there's a few here in Ohio, and there were some in Kansas 5 years ago when I lived there. I'm guessing it's the lack of competition and the "adult" section. Wow, I just looked and they have 25 locations within a 50 mile radius. They mostly aren't in ghetto or hick areas either, which is surprising since those are the primary "people without internet" markets, although they are conspicuously absent from the more notably affluent areas. It seems that being the only game in town for nostalgic hipster types, luddites and old people is working for them right now. Probably not the best investment for the long-term though.
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Aug 7, 2017 18:36
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I assumed HD-DVD stood a better chance at surviving than BD due to the number of titles released on hybrid discs. You could start an HD film library while you still had a DVD player and once you upgraded you wouldn't have to buy all new movies, you just flipped the disc over. The format war would be in its favor because people debating systems would be leaning towards the format favoring what they already had.Monkey Fracas posted:How is Family Video still seemingly expanding? Granted they're only around Lake Michigan but I think they're hanging on. Years ago I think I read about how/why Family Video seemed to survive compared to other chains and I think it came down to a combination of strategies. One was they bought the buildings they set up in rather than rented. This turned out to be a thing that hit chains like Blockbuster where they were renting their space and when the video market took a downturn, it also happened as real estate prices went up and rental contracts were starting to expire. But from what I was told, Family Video would buy their property and then build to include extra rental spaces in the strip for other businesses like pizza or sandwich shops so the business sort of fed one another. People coming for something to rent would go over and grab a pizza. People going to buy a pizza will stop and see if there's a movie. Etc. I think they even have their own non-Little Caesar's pizza chain, too. They might be unintentionally doing better thanks to the change in streaming content over the last few years. When you now have to sub to about 3-4 different services to find movies you want to watch and when a streaming rental is $3 or more for even an old movie, stopping at a Family Video for a 2/$1 for 5 nights comes across as not so bad given their selection compared to Redbox units. JediTalentAgent has a new favorite as of 19:12 on Aug 7, 2017 |
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Aug 7, 2017 19:08
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JediTalentAgent posted:I assumed HD-DVD stood a better chance at surviving than BD due to the number of titles released on hybrid discs. You could start an HD film library while you still had a DVD player and once you upgraded you wouldn't have to buy all new movies, you just flipped the disc over. The format war would be in its favor because people debating systems would be leaning towards the format favoring what they already had. local family video has a little caeser's and a family dollar, but I do not think they own the building because it is for sale and the video store doesn't show any signs of closing 1.2m
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Aug 7, 2017 20:32
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I grew up in bumfuck Newfoundland. The nearest Blockbuster was hours away in a city too small to sustain it so it closed down in the 90's. Smaller chains like Jumbo Video and one other store I can't remember stuck around there before finally going belly-up in 2014. I'm pretty sure the only other Blockbuster on the island was found in St. John's, which wasn't possible for us to travel to without making an overnight trip. Good cable services and high speed internet weren't a thing back home until fairly recently and a lot of people have trouble getting satellite TV because our town is in a really deep heavily forested fjord that opens to the north. Mom and pop rental places (or rather movie and game rentals out of family owned corner stores) stuck around for a long time back home. I worked in one during the summer of 2007 and it was still going strong then. They're all gone now, though, because every town around there finally has access to cable/PVR packages and good internet. Those were found in the larger town just a few miles away, but back in my small hamlet we used to have a place with a bunch of movies and NES games to rent, an arcade with a couple of pool tables, and a counter that sold fried chicken and fries. It kicked rear end, but didn't last very long. There's just an empty lot and a couple of picnic tables left where that building used to be. Those were the good old days. The library wasn't huge (like a couple of dozen games and movies at most), but the few they did have were fantastic. Probably because they kept the money makers on the shelf and traded away the duds. It was nice to just go there on a rainy day in the summer and spend it in the arcade and stuff yourself with chicken and ice cream while spending your entire allowance in quarters on Ninja Turtles. Mak0rz has a new favorite as of 22:03 on Aug 7, 2017 |
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Aug 7, 2017 21:27
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Monkey Fracas posted:How is Family Video still seemingly expanding? Granted they're only around Lake Michigan but I think they're hanging on. There's a family video a few miles down the road from me in Texas. We probably rent more there then all the streaming sites, because it's cheaper, and frankly more fun on a Friday night.
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Aug 7, 2017 21:38
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We've got two family videos in my town. One has their chain (marco's pizza) attached, and getting a pizza gives you a free rental. So you can go in, order a pizza, and browse movies while you wait. Or you can order online and they'll actually deliver a movie of your choice along with the pizza. And this lets you rent like the new stuff too, and it's for more than 1 night, I forget the length exactly. The other store has a little caesars next to it. And yeah, both have a porn section, which places like blockbuster did not do, so lol. I was on a..."dating" website...and saw a photo of a couple in their wedding dress, standing together, inside the adult section of family video. I laugh every time I think of it.
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Aug 7, 2017 21:55
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My cousin owns and operates a video store in a small town of approx 2,500 people. I keep in touch and help with him with computer stuff a lot, so I get to see a lot of the business stuff. I wouldn't say it does great, but it works. It is profitable (barely). I would guess the only reasons he does OK is, #1 the closest Redbox is 22 miles away in another county. #2 the county is severely under served on broadband; the majority of it having no access to wired broadband at all. There is 1Gbps fiber available, but only inside town limits. The rest of the towns in the county are 3Mbps Frontier (if available) or nothing. He primarily rents DVDs (like 70% of all rentals), though BluRay has been picking up. Surprisingly a lot of people simply don't care about DVD vs BluRay. He rents a ton of console games. Recently got into renting out older consoles and games (NES, SNES, N64, PS1). Most of his DVDs are bought from Walmart or Amazon. He will get several copies for rent, and then sells off the extra copies once rental revenue drops on a title. Slightly less than half of rental revenue comes from late fees.
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Aug 7, 2017 23:00
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SLOSifl posted:If you’re a 1991 Solaris UI developer you are good to go buddy. And the UI for the first rev of Solaris (which was actually Solaris 2, because of reasons) was OpenWindows, universally known as BrokenWin by those unfortunate enough to have had to use it, and comparing it to ugly audio player skins or whatever profoundly underestimates how bad it was. The only contemporaneous UI-thing that I can think of from around the same time that was nearly as universally despised was AIX's SMIT, which was the general system config UI and had a progress indicator which consisted of a little animated running guy who would either make the touchdown sign if the command succeeded or fall flat on his rear end if it failed. Which is cute enough, but since this was usually literally the only diagnostic output SMIT provided it wasn't so much as an adorable interface quirk so much as an opportunity for the OS to actively mock you.
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Aug 7, 2017 23:02
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Movie rental chat isn't complete without the twitter for one of the last remaining Blockbusters. https://twitter.com/loneblockbuster?lang=en
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Aug 7, 2017 23:24
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stevewm posted:My cousin owns and operates a video store in a small town of approx 2,500 people.... Aren't retail DVDs from Walmart or Amazon only licensed for home viewing and not for rental? Or am I misremembering how priced for rental worked back in the VHS days?
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Aug 7, 2017 23:26
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big crush on Chad OMG posted:Movie rental chat isn't complete without the twitter for one of the last remaining Blockbusters. https://twitter.com/blockbuster/status/116601504026214401
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Aug 7, 2017 23:27
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SubG posted:If you were developing for Solaris in 1991 you were some kind of space wizard or something because it wasn't even released yet. Cutesy UI things are never a good idea. They might seem like fun, and maybe they are, very briefly... ICQ for the longest time (and I think AIM and other messaging apps too) insisted on playing a loud keyboard-clackety sound effect as you typed. Because I guess you want everyone knowing that you're typing an IM. But even worse was the first version which had the Monty Python TWONGGG "message for you sir" as the default incoming message sound. Which was funny once
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Aug 7, 2017 23:38
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Crini posted:Aren't retail DVDs from Walmart or Amazon only licensed for home viewing and not for rental? Or am I misremembering how priced for rental worked back in the VHS days? That was the VHS days. They tried it with DVDs briefly and it backfired. VHS was originally priced that high because the movie industry didn't want the rental market to succeed. It did despite the high prices, so they just kept those prices and developed this "licensed for" scheme as an excuse to keep charging the high prices. There are some DVD releases targeted for rental use, these just generally have a LOT more previews and no special features, but the pricing is no different than retail copies. They where really big into this for awhile, but have mostly stopped. I actually just called and asked for some updates. He really doesn't get that much from Walmart/Amazon anymore. He gets most now from a service called RenTrack. The way this works is that they send you like 15 copies of a movie and then take a cut of the rental revenue (30%) for a certain period. At the end of the period you have the option of buying the copy for a small amount, or returning it.
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Aug 7, 2017 23:40
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I have pretty much always hated video stores, but also always rooted for Family Video for selling both Faces of Death and porn. And they won the war. U-S-A!
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Aug 7, 2017 23:43
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There's actually a handful of "Blockbuster" stores in Alaska. They're independent video stores in all but name and Dish lets them use the Blockbuster name because they don't give a poo poo. But they've carved out a niche there because the Internet options in rural Alaska are hot garbage and so renting the physical discs is way easier.
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Aug 7, 2017 23:53
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MPAA chairman Jack Valenti, testimony to the United States House of Representatives, 1982 posted:I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone.
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Aug 7, 2017 23:54
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We rented the last Paranormal Activity from Family video last year because we wanted to watch it in 3D and no one was offering 3D streaming at all. There's just something magical about rental stores. It's not in the new releases section though. It's in the other sections that are less than a dollar a night and have worn boxes with hand drawn group pictures of the main characters on them. Or pictures of the two Coreys. I will always remember the VHS for License to Drive thanks to the corner rental section at the convenience store in our town of 500 growing up. They even eventually had ten or so NES games.
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Aug 8, 2017 01:33
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Dr. Quarex posted:I have pretty much always hated video stores, but also always rooted for Family Video for selling both Faces of Death and porn. And they won the war. U-S-A! My cousins store used to have the "back room". He got rid of it when he took ownership of the store. With the rise of the internet, it didn't make much sense anymore to dedicate that much room to it. He removed the wall separating it from the rest of the store and ironically that room became the kids & family section. A few years ago a local church known to have a bit of a fundamentalist slant started protesting outside his store. The cops made them leave when they started throwing rocks at the front window. They where protesting the "smut" he sold. Joke was on them though, he had owned the store for 10 years at that point, and the store had never rented porn during the entirety of his ownership.
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Aug 8, 2017 03:30
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Blu-ray kind of got a short thrift as newer TV's got pretty good at upscaling DVDs, or if you got a PS3. Most people were happy with the quality of an upscaled DVD that they didn't jump onto the band wagon. I'm also reminded of DVD-D, an attempt to make rental DVDs that self destruct. That is you didn't need to return the disc. The DVD was in a vacuum sealed bag t and coated with a chemical that when exposed to oxygen began to eat into the disc, killing it within 48 hours. DIVX was another attempt where the disc were barcoded and read by the player which was hooked up to an internet account. In 1998. A disc could get rented for a one time use or you paid more to upgrade the disc. It was almost immediately hated on release as home cinema consumers feared it would set a low bar for DVD quality as most releases were in pan and scan with no features. Plus the higher costs of the player and the expense combined with key players like Blockbuster not picking up on the format lead the the company blowing $300 million on this white elephant that folded in 1999. There was a study that suggests this caused a slower adoption of DVDs.
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Aug 8, 2017 04:41
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WebDog posted:I'm also reminded of DVD-D, an attempt to make rental DVDs that self destruct. That is you didn't need to return the disc.  This sounds like the worst loving idea. I assume it never actually made it to market?WebDog posted:DIVX was another attempt where the disc were barcoded and read by the player which was hooked up to an internet account. In 1998. I remember people reverse-engineered a free version of the DivX codec (which was proprietary and cost money) called XviD almost immediately after it came to existence  ninja edit: uhhh apparently DIVX and DivX are not at all the same things? I don't know this is reads like some Kingdom Hearts levels of poo poo to me: Wikipedia posted:The "DivX" brand is distinct from "DIVX", which is an obsolete video rental system developed by Circuit City Stores that used custom DVD-like discs and players. The winking emoticon in the early "DivX ;-)" codec name was a tongue-in-cheek reference to the DIVX system. Although not created by them, the DivX company adopted the name of the popular DivX ;-) codec. The company dropped the smiley and released DivX 4.0, which was actually the first DivX version, trademarking the word, DivX.
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Aug 8, 2017 05:23
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Mak0rz posted:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=V3KIqgLIrsE https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flexplay?wprov=sfla1
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Aug 8, 2017 05:39
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Mak0rz posted:
Yeah, seriously. "DIVX" was a hacker's watchword right from the start because of that Circuit City thing (which may or may not have led to Circuit City's demise shortly thereafter). It was looked at with the same contempt that people had for the unhackable military-grade CSS algorithm that "encrypts" DVDs and was cracked before the first DVD made it to market. Hence why the DivX algorithm got that name, basically mocking corporate attempts to keep a leash on technology and information. And then DivX went legit and now you see its logo on DVD players. It's very 
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Aug 8, 2017 10:42
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Oh this was pretty neato. First time I got the connection between 'in the groove' and literally keeping the needle in the groove: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PF4A4wdnXkU
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Aug 8, 2017 12:22
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Data Graham posted:Yeah, seriously. "DIVX" was a hacker's watchword right from the start because of that Circuit City thing (which may or may not have led to Circuit City's demise shortly thereafter). It was looked at with the same contempt that people had for the unhackable military-grade CSS algorithm that "encrypts" DVDs and was cracked before the first DVD made it to market. Remember when the MPAA was suing people for posting "09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0" on the internet?
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Aug 8, 2017 18:14
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Cojawfee posted:Remember when the MPAA was suing people for posting "09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0" on the internet? What's that, beyond hex that's presumably DivX related?
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Aug 8, 2017 18:18
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Prism posted:What's that, beyond hex that's presumably DivX related? Off the top of my head, I bet it's the key for CSS encryption. e: I was close, google says it was the first key discovered for AACS, which was used on HD-DVD and Blu-ray. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AACS_encryption_key_controversy The Fool has a new favorite as of 18:25 on Aug 8, 2017 |
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Aug 8, 2017 18:19
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Iron Crowned posted:The mom and pop ones were the best, but I lived in the suburbs so I was stuck with Blockbuster on one side of the road and Hollywood on the other unless I went to visit my friend downtown. They were your friend why wouldn't you have 
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Aug 8, 2017 18:53
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 Also people wrote a little program to strip stylesheets from web pages which was also called DeCSS, specifically to bait the MPAA into sending cease and desist notices to "innocent" hosters and getting bad press for being big bad bullies. e: DVD-CSS was also cracked wide open thanks to human error, like most encryption schemes that are broken. https://www.wired.com/1999/11/why-the-dvd-hack-was-a-cinch/ Collateral Damage has a new favorite as of 19:32 on Aug 8, 2017 |
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Aug 8, 2017 19:16
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Collateral Damage posted:
wait what? how does that work?
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