Goodbye Blockbuster Video

Well Blockbuster has been put out to pasture. I love having on demand but I also enjoyed the brick and mortar stores. Blockbuster and Movie Gallery both shut down here about 3 years ago. Back in July our last mom &pop video store shut down. I have been browsing video stores as long as I can remember, prob 1985 or so. I'm gonna miss my old friend Blockbuster (and all the video stores). 

When I read about this yesterday, I was honestly surprised to hear that they had any stores left.

The Blockbuster in my town closed up shop at least four or five years ago now. I can't say I miss them terribly. They were the WalMart of the home video business, i.e. the big juggernaut that came into town and squeezed out the local mom & pop video stores wherever they went.

When I first moved to West Milford in 1999, we had a great independently owned video store that had an amazing selection - tons of horror/sci fi, cult films, etc. (in other words all the stuff I like). Then they heard thru the grapevine that Blockbuster was looking to open an outlet directly across the street from them. They knew BB would kill them simply on the new-release rentals alone, so they got in bed with them instead. The indie store closed up for a few weeks and then re-opened as a Blockbuster... but in the interim their back catalog selection was gutted and all the good gory shit was gone, the place had been totally sanitized. But hey, they had an entire wall of copies of the new Transformers movie!!

It's weird...Blockbuster and Hollywood Video are gone. But for some reason Family Video stores keep popping up and sustaining.

Shawn Of Fire wrote:

It's weird...Blockbuster and Hollywood Video are gone. But for some reason Family Video stores keep popping up and sustaining.

I was just about to say the same thing. My Blockbuster and Hollywood Video stores are long gone, yet I have 2 Family Videos within 10 miles of me and both are doing well.

007 wrote:

Shawn Of Fire wrote:

It's weird...Blockbuster and Hollywood Video are gone. But for some reason Family Video stores keep popping up and sustaining.

I was just about to say the same thing. My Blockbuster and Hollywood Video stores are long gone, yet I have 2 Family Videos within 10 miles of me and both are doing well.

There are 5 within 25 miles of my zip code...all doing well. Maybe BB got too big to sustain itself? Who knows... 

Wow we have NONE here now. Not a single one I am aware of at least on this side of town. The last of the independants shut down in July. They actually still had about 50% VHS movies and most of it wasn't available on DVD.

Video stores can still exist in certain niche markets.  Rural areas where few people have high speed internet access is the most common, but also large cities have a market for independent stores that specialize in unique collections (foreign films, classic films, indie films, cult classics, etc).  Stuff that you generally won't find available for streaming on Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, etc.  

Blockbuster was so middle-of-the-road on the movies they carried in stock that they just couldn't compete with streaming services (and Red Box and Netflix DVD by mail) that carry most of the same product.  They were also too "corporate" to attract the hardcore film buffs who were seeking much harder to find titles.

The last local Blockbuster by me just closed up in the last 6 months or so, but they stopped renting about a year or more. You could only buy movies there.

Can't say I miss them much anymore these days, but it was nice to have that option from time-to-time. But yea, their selection blew. "Hey, cool. 20 copies of 'White Chicks' available to rent!!"

Never been inside of one. Maybe because I live in such a rural area, I guess. Now I'll never have the chance. Boo hoo.

I couldn't resist writing a quick HubPage entry about the demise of Blockbuster ...

http://fatfreddyscat.hubpages.com/hub/Farewell-to-Blockbuster-Video

I won't miss Blockbuster at all; they used to piss me off because they only carried the R-rated versions of my horror flicks.  I ALWAYS go for the unrated.

What I miss are the Ma and Pa video shops.  You never knew what you would find in one of those.

I much prefer Redbox and netflix.

Any video stores here in Fresno are located in lower-income areas where high-speed internet is as much a no-show as city water. Of course, some mom n pop supermarkets that don't have a Redbox still carry rentals--but of course they're in the same vicinity as the video stores.

We still have an oddball little shoppe in our Tower District--basically a little San Francisco--that deals in, get this, rental VHS tapes. Not even DVD's. Not kidding. The reason they're popular is because they carry first-run prints of rare, foreign, cult, and OOP movies that either never made it to DVD or suffered in transfer quality. Back in the day I would go in there to rent Kieslowski's Three Color Trilogy, but of course Criterion has the market cornered on all that at this point. I have no idea how this store has stayed alive. The owner is a barefoot kid with oily hair and the place has stains on the carpet and smells like shwag.

Shawn Of Fire wrote:

It's weird...Blockbuster and Hollywood Video are gone. But for some reason Family Video stores keep popping up and sustaining.

When I lived in TN I was bummed to see Hollywood Video go the way of the Dodo but i thought Blockbuster was gone years ago...Family Video had some nice prices and a nice system but now with Netflix, and all that on Demand stuff who needs to go to a video store? Well other than me

I was genuinely horrified to see all of the cool little record shops become extinct but Blockbuster or any DVD rental shop? I'll not lose sleep.

Good riddance. I haven't rented from a Blockbuster in probably a decade. I hopped on the Netflix train in its infancy and that was the end of my need for Blockbuster.

Witchfinder wrote:

Good riddance.  I haven't rented from a Blockbuster in probably a decade.  I hopped on the Netflix train in its infancy and that was the end of my need for Blockbuster.

Yep. Netflix made life SO much easier and they had a better selection than any Blockbuster.

Witchfinder wrote:

Good riddance.  I haven't rented from a Blockbuster in probably a decade.  I hopped on the Netflix train in its infancy and that was the end of my need for Blockbuster.

Can you believe that Blockbuster had the chance to BUY Netflix for $50 mil back in 2000? They looked at it, saw that it was losing money, and said "Nah, forget it, we're not interested." Now look at Netflix all these years later. Haha

The main thing I'm grateful about Netflix for is re-igniting my love of independent films, I've discovered so many great flicks that never got wide distribution. And the streaming also got me to check out many TV series that I had never seen because it's so much more enjoyable to watch shows in blocks instead of waiting for new episodes doled out a week at a time.

S.D. wrote:

The main thing I'm grateful about Netflix for is re-igniting my love of independent films, I've discovered so many great flicks that never got wide distribution.  And the streaming also got me to check out many TV series that I had never seen because it's so much more enjoyable to watch shows in blocks instead of waiting for new episodes doled out a week at a time.  

I discovered One Step Beyond because of Netflix. Hopefully whoever is redistributing it, puts the other seasons out as well. Love watching the TV series stuff!

I dont watch too much tv first run so having episodes on Netflix and Amazon is nice.

I was surprised to hear they had one store let alone 300

Yes, One Step Beyond is a GREAT show. I have one of those $5 dollar DVD's I found in a bin somewhere with something like 50 episodes on it. But the quality is so poor. Still enjoyable anyway.

For those of you who have Netflix -- How is the streaming feature? We don't have it but have wanted to get it ever since Arrested Development has been on there with new episodes. We don't have a blu-ray player yet but I would like to get one that has the ability to play Netflix. Just wondering how well the streaming feature was.

mikeinfla wrote:

Yes, One Step Beyond is a GREAT show. I have one of those $5 dollar DVD's I found in a bin somewhere with something like 50 episodes on it. But the quality is so poor. Still enjoyable anyway.

For those of you who have Netflix -- How is the streaming feature? We don't have it but have wanted to get it ever since Arrested Development has been on there with new episodes. We don't have a blu-ray player yet but I would like to get one that has the ability to play Netflix. Just wondering how well the streaming feature was.

i love the streaming. It works really well.

Fat Freddy wrote:

The indie store closed up for a few weeks and then re-opened as a Blockbuster... but in the interim their back catalog selection was gutted and all the good gory shit was gone, the place had been totally sanitized. But hey, they had an entire wall of copies of the new Transformers movie!!

I feel the same way about record stores. And I hate how it works. The good ones are the ones that carry one copy of each interesting new CD, even if it is an obscure sub-genre. While the big chain that carries 700 copies of the top 10 albums only, sells a lot more.

Okay, sometimes it sucks the small shop sold out their one copy, but unless you like whatever MTV tells you is good music, you won't find anything worth buying in the big store.

Unfortunately, as CD sales are dwindling, it's the shops that carry 700 copies of the latest Madonna/Gaga/Bieber/Timberlake albums will be the last ones standing.