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Not just one, but two. I'm lucky enough to be in close proximity to both a Family Video (newly opened no less) and a local mom-and-pop rental store called Video Universe. I go to Family Video if I want the new stuff cheap and Video Universe if I want something classic. I got to tell ya that I really dig the experience and not just out of nostalgia. It's a great excuse to get out of the house, a good experience for my daughter picking the movies she wants off the shelves and overall just a cheaper alternative. I still have Netflix and Prime because I dig on original content and the convenience, but the video store just offers much more in terms of specific new and old content. Some of the benefits of the video store: -Great atmosphere with plenty of great employees/patrons around to talk about movies with. -Free kids movies are a godsend. -Being able to pay only $5 to watch an entire HBO series that is vastly overpriced for both video and digital. -Having a pizza place attached to Family Video. No, seriously, it's actually in tandem with the video store. There is a takeout window right in the middle of the new release section. The best thing ever is that if you rent a new release and later order pizza delivery, the delivery guy will return the movie for free. Where the hell was this place when I was a kid? -Plenty of rare and strange movies that I love discovering on the shelf. Video Universe has an entire section for Troma and Takashi Miike films. -If the movie is messed up, I can just bring it back and get another one for free. None of this email back and forth BS I've had to deal with on Vudu or Amazon for digital rentals going from server or bandwidth problems. Anybody else still go to the video store?
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Sep 30, 2014 18:08
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TrixRabbi posted:Anyone think there's a chance that the mom & pop video store could come back some day, or is the concept dead and gone? I'm optimistic that it will. Keep in mind that the Family Video I mentioned just opened up a few months ago. Last Friday I was in there the place was packed with people renting stuff and enjoying the free pizza samples from the attached eatery. There is a certain demand as there are several people is rural areas with internet that cannot support streaming as well. Many of them are reliant on Redbox for videos or just purchasing them online. The prospect of going to a video store where you can actually talk with people rather than going through online customer support is very appealing in that aspect. Blockbuster and Hollywood mainly went down because they were mega-chains of video stores that expanded far too quickly and shot way over the bow for aspirations. Blockbuster at one point had music stores and a Dave & Busters equal. They were doomed to fail when a national alternative presented itself. Mom and pop stores have a better chance because they'll rely on the local community which I'm very thankful has kept mine alive and well. Some awesome video stores. -Scarecrow Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9VMhEq6kxG4 -Video Universe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0TesPB6G9eY -Video Ezy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQYXpgziaJ0 -Video Stop: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1QqaDZo_sME
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Oct 1, 2014 14:23
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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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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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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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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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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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The Time Dissolver posted:The early-to-mid-aughts was hard times because VHS was dying out with a lot of (by film dork standards) relatively in-demand stuff still not having made it to DVD. So thanks, Discount Video in Minneapolis for being the only place in the Upper Midwest with copies of like, fuckin', Coonskin and Light Years. Actually, the Hollywood Video in Minneapolis had a VHS copy of Street Fight (the rerelease title of Coonskin) since the Uptown location had way more VHS tapes than any other location I've been to. But, yeah, 2004-2006 was an excellent time for collecting VHS tapes. The last VHS was printed in 2005 which lead to all the big chain stores selling off their entire VHS library in droves. The Hollywood Video I mentioned was the best for selling all their VHS titles at $.50 per ($.25 if you bought a certain number). I also saw many massive collections dumped at places like Cheapo which included the complete first season of Star Trek and The X-Files.
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Oct 12, 2014 05:49
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LloydDobler posted:All you guys waxing nostalgic had a very different experience than I ever did. I loving hated going to the video store. Big chain or local, didn't matter, they never ever had what I wanted to see, or my second choice, or my third. Never enough copies of anything, cost almost as much as going to the real movies, I ended up just re-renting Die Hard every loving time I went there. The video store wasn't that well liked if all you ever went in for was new releases. There was plenty of comedy shows at the time that made satire out of the limited copies, the slacker employees and too many forms of IDs required for registering member ship. It was hated the same way the people despised the phone company because there was no competition. If you didn't have a lot of money and wanted to see a movie out of the theater, you were stuck with the video store. But now that there is competition, video stores have the opportune time to proof their worth in the new market. The ones I've been into have now become much more community friendly and offer so much more to customers with better prices. It's a store model that's very much improved from the hussle-and-bussle era where EVERYONE came into the same store demanding to rent Tim Burton's Batman only to go home with something else.
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Oct 15, 2014 20:21
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computer parts posted:I don't think I've ever seen a blockbuster kiosk and I've only ever seen redboxes at McDonald's. Places you are guaranteed to find a Redbox kiosk: -McDonald's -Walgreens -Local grocery stores -Higher end gas stations
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Oct 15, 2014 22:09
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LloydDobler posted:My friend lives in a semi-industrial part of town so yeah retail is sparse. There are 3 within walking distance of my house. The VHS era was the dark ages if you wanted to watch every movie out there. Given the video store's limited storage for carrying bulky VHS tapes, changes are they didn't have everything available. That goes double for mom and pop stores. If you wanted a certain video of an older film, you'd often have to special order it from catalogs. Also, I checked on Xanadu and Dark Star and that seemed like more of an issue with the distribution than the video store. Xanadu wasn't released on VHS by Universal until 1997 and Dark Star was as late as 2001 before it hit VHS. It might've been released through third-party distributors in the late-80's, but even then you'd still have to look around for them. Heavy Metal took 15 years before it was ever released on home video. It's a generational thing. Nowadays you can watch everything on DVD. Even the really terrible B-movies that were never that good that nobody asked for.
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Oct 17, 2014 16:37
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Jose Oquendo posted:I know a guy who owns the entire Highlander TV series on VHS. It takes up an entire giant bookshelf. I can't imagine how much he dropped for it. My local Video Universe has an entire bookcase of Dark Shadows VHS tapes. Based on the length of the series, I'm willing to bet that's not the entire series, but I could be wrong.
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Oct 18, 2014 03:12
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