Are Local Video Stores Going the Way of the Dinosaur?

[NMAmy]

Hi, neighbor! I'm about 2.5 hours from Lansing (grandmother's family was from around Lansing so in my youth visited there quite often). We also have a Family Video and since I do live in the sticks, I doubt if it's going to be going out of business any time soon. However, my DD joined Netflix and hasn't gone there in years.

Well, hi there, neighbor! I grew up here, moved to New Mexico for about 15 years, and ended up living 10 minutes from my mom's house. We like to say I took the scenic route.

One reason we haven't switched to Netflix is that I have a teenage dd. We go to the video store a couple of times a week and get WAY more than 3 movies. We like to have theme marathons--and well, you just can't pick the theme in advance, you know!

 

[monkeyboy]

well Blockbuster doesn't rent stuff over an R rating

 

[WatchinCaptKangaroo]

The Blockbuster up the street from me closed down recently. The mom & pop up the road from them is still going strong.

 

[olena]

What do you use to see videos? Or don't you rent movies?

We have movie channels and we buy the movies we liked in the theaters. If we ever thought about renting again, it would be Netflix or a similar company.

 

[FreshTressa]

I LOVE my local blockbuster!!

I have that pay $25 a month and rent as much as you want. LOVE LOVE LOVE it!

I don't like netflix...same reason I don't really like catalog stores. I like to browse and touch, and I kind of like the atmosphere at the blockbuster here. I know the employees, etc.

 

[calie_j]

I owned a small town general store that rented movies, we bought the store in 1992. We had the biggest collection in the area; 2,000 videos shortly after we bought it. After the 1st couple years we saw rentals declining with each year, I think initially it was because of satellite tv since now all the farmers who didn't have cable available to them and could only get 1-2 fuzzy channels now has hundreds available to them and later on pay per view took more of our business. We also saw our late fee list growing huge and more stolen movies with each passing year which was a hassle. Back then rentals were big because the new movies that came out were either sellthru ($25 or less usually the huge blockbusters or cartoons, these are the ones you'd see for sale at Walmart the same day you could rent them) or rental price ($70-80 each which made renting your only option at that price since noone would pay to buy it). Those higher price videos would be released at the lower price about 6 months later if they were popular. When we quit the video rental business in 1999 we had over $4,000 videos we sold off. At that time the rental income was very low and DVD's were starting to become more popular.

We never got into DVD's but from what I saw back then they were all pretty cheap at $20 - $30 compared to new release videos. Of course the bigger chain stores could buy these alot cheaper then we could. I'd guess just by seeing all the ads for the new movies arriving on Tuesday (the normal release date each week) in the Best Buy/Target/Walmart flyers that most new movies are coming out on DVD at a low enough price to sell them which is another cut into the rental business. No late fee stores and places like Netflix are another draw away from video stores.

Since we got rid of our video rentals I get all my movies off pay per view. For $3.99 I tape it and watch it at my leisure which is sometimes months later.

Calie

 

[Charade]

well Blockbuster doesn't rent stuff over an R rating

Neither does Netflix. They have NC-17 and unrated though. Not what you're looking for. You dirty...

 

[disneyfav4ever]

There used to be three video stores in my town. A Blockbuster, a Hollywood Video, and a privatly owned one. The private one went out of business a little while ago, and Hollywood Video is getting kind of rundown. It seems that Blockbuster is the only one that stands a chance at staying around much longer, though they do have that online rental thing in addition to stores, so maybe that's why.

I to, used to travel to the video store, but the last time I actually rented a movie, was probably over a year ago, before I started using Netflix.

 

[ChibiJones]

We use Blockbuster Online. We watch alot of anime & the local stores don't carry much, if any, of it.