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Going to Blockbuster or Video Update with friends is one of my best memories of high school. With the Movie Studios in town closing last month, there are honestly no brick-and-mortar options in Edmonton so it's only digital distribution for me  Though it's kind of nice because VPN to Netflix USA (Netflix Canada sucks, everyone I know knows of the proxy option to get the good stuff) with absolute ease. For new releases the PlayStation Store has good prices for HD. I ain't starving over here.
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Oct 2, 2014 21:48
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The only video store still standing in my hometown in Wyoming also rents out construction and farming equipment. They also have a drive-thru restaurant too.
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Oct 2, 2014 22:32
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I used to go to a little mom and pop shop called Audio/Video Plus until a few years ago when I moved, and it was just to far away. Sadly I just looked them up and they closed down for good a couple of months ago. Which is kind of tragic because they'd been open for decades and had drat near every thing since they never got rid of back stock. Like if I went in there and asked to rent a copy of The Crazies, they'd ask if I wanted it on DVD, VHS, or Betamax, that's how awesome this place was. End of an era.
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Oct 3, 2014 00:03
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I am jealous as gently caress of you buttholes who still have a video rental place but don't use it. The last one in this area is now a US cellular outlet; when I lived in Pittsburgh I hit up the local places as often as possible but they were shutting down fast, too.
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Oct 3, 2014 01:03
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I supplement my Netflix subscription with frequent trips to Movie Madness in Portland because Netflix for some reason flat-out refuses to stock a solid 90% of Blu-Ray reissues, especially genre titles. Plus the place is wall-to-wall movie memorabilia and there's nothing like looking at a dress Julie Andrews wore in Sound of Music while renting Frankenhooker.
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Oct 3, 2014 06:22
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caligulamprey posted:I supplement my Netflix subscription with frequent trips to Movie Madness in Portland because Netflix for some reason flat-out refuses to stock a solid 90% of Blu-Ray reissues, especially genre titles. I wish my local had some cool stuff like that. Best they can do is to drench the store in promotional posters, wall scrolls and silly comics written on promo pages. Better than nothing I guess. I do love the big, fat movie bible on a pedestal they have. I used to thumb through that thing all the time as a kid.
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Oct 3, 2014 14:46
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I was a video store employee all the up until our demise in 2011. I think they can still work in certain areas, especially the one where our store was situated. We were in low income, heavy foot traffic, suburban location where people didn't necessarily have high speed internet or Netflix subscriptions. Also did a ton of cash transactions compared to plastic. We did really well in this area and if Blockbuster didn't completely crumple, would probably still be in business today. It's all about location really. I really enjoyed being able to talk about films with the customers and all, like the OP said, it was a good atmosphere. Also, I'm not sure if all stores experienced this - but horror was probably our #1 rated genre. If it was a shlocky B-list horror movie with that guy who was once on a TV show, people rented it like crazy.
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Oct 3, 2014 16:20
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Harlock posted:Also, I'm not sure if all stores experienced this - but horror was probably our #1 rated genre. If it was a shlocky B-list horror movie with that guy who was once on a TV show, people rented it like crazy. Having worked in one up until 2007, horror is certainly the most popular mainly because it's the most abundant. Of all the direct-to-video movies we'd receive, I'd say over half that stock were horror movies and just about all of them were rented at least once by somebody. With such a never-ending supply, there was always something new in the genre whenever you went in. And if you had one of those subscriptions accounts common in the early 2000s, you didn't mind throwing something a little simple and silly on your tab. As a kid, I absolutely loved the horror section. So many films with tons of sequels that they were almost my generation's equal of film serials. My brother and I would be constantly buzzing about what would happen in the next Nightmare on Elm Street or Puppet Master series. Heck, even today I go straight to the horror section in the video store when I enter.
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Oct 3, 2014 18:00
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The town I live in has Hastings, which also sells new & used books, DVDs, video games, and CDs, but their new stuff is overpriced as hell and their selection for everything is about 90% stuff that came out in the last five years. I've actually found it increasingly useful for rentals, though, mostly because I suspect Netflix isn't trying very hard to maintain its DVD catalogue. About a third of my DVD queue has a "very long wait," even movies that shouldn't be that hard to find, like Thelma & Louise and Ocean's Twelve.
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Oct 4, 2014 08:45
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tin can made man posted:There's a great video store in my neighborhood called Le Video I have a huge backlog of stuff I intend to watch someday but that place is like a really nice used-book store that you can just wander around and get lost in. They also do weekly specials with weird themes.
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Oct 4, 2014 10:17
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I still use my local video store because internet is expensive and capped here, so if you're in a high usage household it works out cheaper to just go and rent the thing than it would cost in overage charges. Plus, they rent console games if I feel like a lazy weekend, and almost all their stock is $1 on a Tuesday and Wednesday.
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Oct 4, 2014 11:23
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There's still a Family Video near me. I don't go there often, but I got snowed in for a few days earlier this year, and it was super nice to get 3 or 4 movies and a game for a week for like 10 bucks. I usually rent from Redbox these days, but the FV is good if I'm not planning on watching the movies I pick up that night or the next day. I guess I'm sort of a Luddite because I've only rented one movie on a VOD service (Vudu had Citizen Kane for $0.99 a while ago and I wanted to see the HD transfer). It just seems so goddamned expensive to me when I can get a Blu-Ray at the Redbox up the street for a buck fifty and not have to worry about buffering or any of that stuff.
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Oct 4, 2014 20:16
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I lack the steely nerves required to use the Redbox. I fall apart every time. I don't know what to rent, and now there's a guy behind me, and I still don't know what to rent, and great, now there's a lady behind the guy behind me. Maybe I will just grab Step Brothers. I wanted something new, but I think I just heard the guy behind me mutter something. poo poo, I accidentally hit Switched At Birth. gently caress. OK, gotta commit. Switched At Birth it is.
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Oct 4, 2014 22:49
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Slugworth posted:I lack the steely nerves required to use the Redbox. I fall apart every time. I don't know what to rent, and now there's a guy behind me, and I still don't know what to rent, and great, now there's a lady behind the guy behind me. Maybe I will just grab Step Brothers. I wanted something new, but I think I just heard the guy behind me mutter something. poo poo, I accidentally hit Switched At Birth. gently caress. OK, gotta commit. Switched At Birth it is. I know that you're going for comedy here, but you do know that you can go to Redbox's website and see what's available at the box of your choosing?
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Oct 5, 2014 01:35
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Our local mom and pop video store closed their location down and supposedly re-opened in a different building, but I haven't seen it. I miss going there.
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Oct 5, 2014 02:13
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I haven't been to a video store since all the Hollywood Video and Blockbuster stores went out of business years ago and started selling off everything inside their buildings, which seems like ages ago. But today, out of curiosity, I did Google the area to see if there were any family run businesses still in operation, and lo and behold, I found Video Paradise, right outside of Phoenix. I went there, and snapped the following photo:  The whole store smelled like the year 1980, and the computers used at the checkout desk looked like they were from around the same era (CRT monitors with about 5 inches worth of dirt and cigarette smoke on them, and bulky mechanical keyboards that looked like they were Commodore 64's). However, I was shocked by their catalog. They basically have about 10-20 copies of almost every single new release DVD (but not necessarily Blu-Ray), and they've got deals like "5 movies, 5 bucks, 5 days"; though that doesn't apply to new release titles. It is quite possibly one of largest movie rental shops i've ever been to in my life. It was like some sort of bizarro time travel experience. I'm not sure what to think. Gonz fucked around with this message at 06:48 on Oct 6, 2014 |
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Oct 6, 2014 06:45
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FrostedButts posted:Not just one, but two. I'm lucky enough to be in close proximity to both a Family Video (newly opened no less) Where do you live that someone would open a video store in the year 2014? I read an article the other day that video stores are still popular in Alaska and parts of bumfuck Texas where internet is still either prohibitively expensive or not readily available. FrostedButts posted:Some of the benefits of the video store: Okay, these are all pretty awesome things. I have to agree with taking kids to a brick and mortar place, I do the same thing with Best Buy even though I'd never buy anything there. For them it's like one of those computer expos I used to love going to in the '90s. raditts fucked around with this message at 14:38 on Oct 6, 2014 |
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Oct 6, 2014 14:36
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raditts posted:Where do you live that someone would open a video store in the year 2014? There is a market for video rental stores in 2014, just not stuffy behemoths up to their eyeballs in debt like Blockbuster.
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Oct 6, 2014 16:54
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Harlock posted:AFIAK in the mid-west, Family Video is doing pretty well. Good enough to expand and open more stores. Believe it. Both stores I was talking about -> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7srxA0p5Lt0
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Oct 6, 2014 17:27
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tin can made man posted:There's a great video store in my neighborhood called Le Video whose massive selection includes a giant VHS catalog of everything under the sun (like a quarter shelf just for "Nunsploitation"). There were talks of it closing a few months ago, and I remember feeling vaguely outraged that such a neighborhood institution could be shut down by the cold heart of the market until I realized I hadn't stepped foot in there in years because, well, I never really needed to. They're still in business, so I should swing by and look for something obscure. Yes, yes you should! Especially when you speak so fondly of "Le Video". Video stores have always been a part of my life growing up, and I was a collector right from the start - I had over a dozen Simpsons VHS tapes recorded off the TV with pages written alongside of which episodes were on each tape. I think my first DVD was "Fallen" (w/ Denzel & John Goodman), and I was hooked from there. There's a certain romance to just physically owning something, unwrapping the packaging, the artwork, showing it off on display. I never thought that hard about it back then, I just knew I liked having a film at my disposal anytime. Let alone the better quality, the extra features, commentaries, etc I think with Blockbuster eventually charging so much money to rent a film before they went out of business, it was maybe $1-2 more to buy it pre-viewed - so I became conditioned to just buy everything. The collection grew and grew. I started taking film more seriously with following director's work, getting into classics & foreign cinema, and now I'm at something like 1200 DVDs & blurays. There's currently 4 Family Video stores within 20-25 minutes of home, and I'm still buying movies on a regular basis. It's fun to hear all these little stories. And yes, Family Video is certainly doing well. A friend of mine is now managing 5 of them in the area (just a few hours from Toronto) and no sign of slowing down. Although it's not the best selection for someone like me who wants more classic & foreign cinema - that's what Amazon is for. friendo55 fucked around with this message at 15:01 on Oct 8, 2014 |
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Oct 6, 2014 21:52
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Jose Oquendo posted:I know that you're going for comedy here, but you do know that you can go to Redbox's website and see what's available at the box of your choosing? I had no idea. We only use redbox when we are at our cabin. Thanks for the heads up.
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Oct 6, 2014 22:45
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One of the great things I love about video stores now is that none of them use membership cards anymore. As someone who worked in a video store for years, only about 8% of the people I checked out ever remembered their card and you'd have to look it up by phone number. Now they only do phone number.
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Oct 7, 2014 19:03
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I work at a video store in a college town and it's seriously the best.  Also, our name is "That's Rentertainment" and yes we do smell like 1983. We have everything.
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Oct 7, 2014 19:25
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We had a local place when I was growing up called Home Video (easy, right?). It was two stories, and I rented so many video games from them it's not even funny. Booger Man was so funny I rented it twice. Their kids selection was located downstairs and I saw literally every Rainbow Brite movie ever made thanks to that place. I loved the smell of VHS tapes. When I got glasses in the second grade, my parents took pity on me and rented Labyrinth. The last video I rented from them was Princess Mononoke. It's now a car rental place.
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Oct 7, 2014 20:01
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tin can made man posted:There's a great video store in my neighborhood called Le Video whose massive selection includes a giant VHS catalog of everything under the sun (like a quarter shelf just for "Nunsploitation"). There were talks of it closing a few months ago, and I remember feeling vaguely outraged that such a neighborhood institution could be shut down by the cold heart of the market until I realized I hadn't stepped foot in there in years because, well, I never really needed to. They're still in business, so I should swing by and look for something obscure. Have you ever seen "Alucarda"?  It's my favourite nunsploitation film, outside of "The Devils" of course (maybe it doesn't even count as nunsploitation?), which is just a generally incredible film.
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Oct 7, 2014 21:49
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There's a decent video store in Park Slope that waived their late fees for me when I told them I was a teacher. My school library's selection of materials sucked, and I had no Smart Board. So, they became my go-to for any videos I wanted to show.
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Oct 8, 2014 01:47
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I was checking out DVDs at Blockbuster Video as recently as 2008, back when they had their Blockbuster Online service as a competitor to Netflix. It was great: you could get as many as three discs in the mail at a time, and when you watched them, you could return them to a Blockbuster store and trade them out for another DVD, and that would trigger the Online service to immediately mail you the next disc in your queue. This is how I burned through Deadwood, Rome, and Carnivale in rapid succession. I have a lot of happy childhood memories at video stores. I'll never forget the first VHS tapes my family ever rented when we bought our first VCR in the mid-'80s. My musical-loving parents got Fiddler on the Roof, my younger brother got a collection of Gumby stop-motion cartoons, and it blew my little mind to discover a tape of Iron Man cartoons -- the poorly-animated ones from the '60s that often cut panels straight out of the old comics. They had a whole series of old Marvel cartoons in giant, colorful clamshell cases, and one of my favorite things to do at all the local video stores would be to put them into alphabetical order, front and center, so they'd catch everyone else's attention. (And I grew up to be a librarian, and I still read comics.) When video stores started stocking Nintendo (NES) cartridges, they got even cooler. And back then, the pre-Blockbuster stores always had those swinging Old West saloon-style doors leading into mysterious back rooms where they kept the porno tapes. Of course I always had to take glimpses under the doors or between the wooden slats, hoping to see some boobs. It was better than the inevitable horror aisle, with some truly unique, creepy, occasionally terrifying box art. There was something about movie posters and hand-illustrated VHS box covers back then that really caught your attention and seeped into your memory forever, the way all these forgettable Photoshopped floating heads and big red text on white background covers never do. Anyway, I just miss video stores, so I've enjoyed this thread.
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Oct 8, 2014 05:45
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FrostedButts posted:One of the great things I love about video stores now is that none of them use membership cards anymore. What keeps the second person in line from overhearing a phone number, going to the other clerk, using that number, then renting a movie with cash that they have no intention of returning?
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Oct 8, 2014 06:12
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Video stores i've used need a pin number as well as a phone number which would prevent that.
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Oct 8, 2014 08:06
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GORDON posted:What keeps the second person in line from overhearing a phone number, going to the other clerk, using that number, then renting a movie with cash that they have no intention of returning? They ask for a driver's license as well. That was also kind of the point of having a membership card, but nobody remembered them so forget that.
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Oct 8, 2014 14:10
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Big Bad Voodoo Lou posted:back when they had their Blockbuster Online service I had this as an option with Dish Network. BB would have some older movies that Netflix didn't. When they discontinued the service, they told everybody just to keep any DVDs they still had out and not to mail them back.
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Oct 8, 2014 23:33
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When I was a kid we had a local mom and pop video rental store that also had an ice cream parlor inside. poo poo ruled. Thinking about it, 25 years ago in my town of less than 20,000 people there was I think 6 video rental stores. Plus several of the supermarkets rented videos. Seems absurd now. Basticle fucked around with this message at 23:50 on Oct 8, 2014 |
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Oct 8, 2014 23:44
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My mother never gave a poo poo, and often admonished, my video game habit as a child until the local Pittsburgh Blockbuster hosted a video game competition. It was 1995; you competed by getting the highest score, in a set time, in 3 games - NBA Jam, the newly released Judge Dredd, and some F1 racer game I cannot remember. 1st place got you a trip to Florida or wherever to compete in the championships, I was living my dream of being in the movie The Wizard. Unfortunately I only placed 2nd b/c Scott Skiles missed a 3 at the buzzer but we did get 100 free rentals, which in retrospect was probably way better than whatever bullshit happened Florida. My family finally was reaping the benefits of my nerdy, isolationist habit PLUS I rented FF2 for snes enough times to almost get halfway through without having to return it and lose my save! This was the coolest thing Blockbuster ever did and also my favorite memory of one.
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Oct 9, 2014 04:28
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Basticle posted:Thinking about it, 25 years ago in my town of less than 20,000 people there was I think 6 video rental stores. Plus several of the supermarkets rented videos. Seems absurd now. I had forgotten until just now that our local supermarket rented videos for a few years. They blocked off a section at the front and had new releases, a very limited supply of older stuff and a few videos for sale. I think that's where my copy of The Mighty Ducks came from. I believe the hometown had four places during its history, but no more than two open at the same time. The first was in a furniture store and it also rented Nintendo games. The second was the longest-lived and best selection. New releases were $3 per night and everything else was $1 per night. I can't remember video game prices, but they might have been the same. That place had a cutout from Freddie Got Fingered. I did not know of the legend of Freddie Got Fingered at the time, so I never had the chance to properly enjoy it. Horror was on one side of the main room, with new releases on the left. Older stuff was in the side room, with kids stuff and video games in a smaller room. I don't remember it stocking porn, but this was smack in the middle of small-town Bible Belt. There was the one in the supermarket and finally a Movie Gallery. The only thing that exists now is one Redbox location at the same shopping center as the Movie Gallery. Just a couple of years ago, Ingles was still doing rentals in its supermarket chain. I haven't been in an Ingles since then, so they may still be. The place where I live now had one of a small chain; it went out of business just a couple of months ago. I had been there twice, once for a $1 sale of DVDs and the other when they were just starting to liquidate.
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Oct 9, 2014 07:33
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I recently moved to a new area, and was surprised to find there was actually a video store here. Still haven't gone in, and probably won't, but it's weirdly fascinating that a place like that still exists. I guess they rely on a lot of business from the no-internet folks and the indian res not far away. I think one of my fondest memories of renting videos as a kid was when my dad went off by himself to pick the movies, and without fail, every single time he would manage to pick the worst movies imaginable. Childhood frustration quickly led to an ongoing bet with my sister and mom about how bad the movies would be when my dad returned. "Hey kids, I'm back! I think I finally managed to get a good one this time. It stars Dabney Coleman and Dyan Cannon." *child retching sounds heard from other room*
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Oct 9, 2014 09:03
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FrostedButts posted:One of the great things I love about video stores now is that none of them use membership cards anymore. I think we could have done it by name, I honestly don't remember. I just used to remember the ID numbers of our regulars.
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Oct 9, 2014 21:24
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Bloody Hedgehog posted:I recently moved to a new area, and was surprised to find there was actually a video store here. Still haven't gone in, and probably won't, but it's weirdly fascinating that a place like that still exists. I guess they rely on a lot of business from the no-internet folks and the indian res not far away. Every time I watch Clerks I think "Man, I'd love to open a video store." And then I remember "when was the last time I went to a video store?" and realize that short of getting free rent for the space and just living there like the engineer in UHF there is no way in hell one of those places can turn a profit without some other gimmick. I guess in rural areas where everything is either dial up or satellite, you can do a bit better, but still, most of those have a redbox at the grocery store these days. I mean i was sad when the movie store here closed, but i never set foot in there, and now since they firebombed the co-op the city gave the co-op the old video store's space to use, and the co-op has since just completely taken over the building and you can't even tell anymore, and now the co-op has like twice the square-footage it used to so it wound up being a net positive to the town, which is kinda :happysmith: I do have some super fond memories of the places i used to rent movies from though. places were great. Nowadays short of like, catering to nostalgia and trying to get hipsters in and doing some sort of barcade that rents videos, i cant think of how to make a place like that profitable.
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Oct 9, 2014 23:02
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I went to the video store today. Picked up Night of the Hunter and Texas Chainsaw from Video Store Named Desire. Smelled like the 70s in there.
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Oct 11, 2014 02:19
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I haven't been to a video store in probably 5-10 years, but as a kid it was always fun to browse through the movies/video games and pick up something that looked cool. There's actually a video store in my town that opened up a few years ago. I went to apply for a job there, I thought it was going to be some sort of video production company or something, I was really surprised when I saw DVD boxes on the shelves.
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Oct 11, 2014 04:08
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Fond memories of video stores: * My family renting a VCR when I was a kid. That's when I saw the Indiana Jones movies and Back to the Future. I remember it being so, so exciting to have this mysterious contraption hooked up to our TV for a day or two. The only thing I remember about video stores back then were the lurid horror covers. Of course I've now watched every movie that I can remember the cover of  * Being home alone on college break taking care of the animals and renting, oh, 25 movies in a week from Hollywood Video. I think I went through nearly every Friday the 13th in that run. The last time I went in (you could only rent 10 at a time, which was a special or something) the clerk was clearly wide-eyed and surreptitiously showing my rental history to a coworker while pretending to have them help with something. "Yo, check out this loving  ." You had to get into The Zone watching that many movies; I would always take a walk outside between movies to help stave off the inevitable headache. Nothing like watching some grungy 80s horror movie VHS with the blinds closed on a stupidly bright 90 degree day at 11AM. * There used to be a cool place within walking distance of where I live now. They even had a Criterion Collection section! (I wondered why someone didn't steal some of those, because they were out of print and worth cash-money). My fondest memory of that place is stumbling over there when I was home sick with the flu and watching Suspiria and Tenebrae in a fever haze. That location is now... a roundabout. Of course, then I discovered that the local library has an insane selection. I feel vaguely guilty that I've never checked a book from them  I don't think there's a single physical rental place left in this town (upper-class suburb). In the less affluent parts of town Family Video is definitely around.
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Oct 11, 2014 04:46
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