What was Blockbuster Video like?

Blockbuster sold pizza?

>tfw zoomer and got to experience blockbuster with my family
comfey

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There were other options. Blockbuster was the biggest one though. Think of it like Crayola and Rose Arts.

There were always a lot of mom and pop video stores, and things like local convenience stores and grocery stores renting movies.
Truly a magical time. You never knew when a movie was going to get rented. Though with the latter places, if you had siblings, you often heard 'you all have to agree on one movie' and that kind of sucked.

Did you experience VHS video stores? If not then fuck off. That's like me going to Johnny Rockets and saying I experienced the 50s.

No, you got that somewhere else. Never seen one without pizza very close by. Didn't sell beer, either.

mildew
and saloons

Yes i experienced them, my family wasn’t rich and still used VHS a lot

Worked in near-dead oil town in Oklahoma back in the early 10s. They had a Hollywood Video or maybe a Blockbuster until 2013. They had absolutely shit internet, and you kind of had to buy or rent DVDs or Blu-Rays to get bye. They still had a VHS section, FFS.

Why did every blockbuster have carpeted floors? To make them feel more like home?

I actually worked at one during the summer. Easiest job I ever had. Free movies. When Hollywood video made every rental 5 days Blockbuster followed

A challenger appears

Moovies was unironically the best store, and it smelled delicious for some reason.

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The logo was based. And the carpet was black and white spots like a cow.

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What pizza did you usually get? The Pizza Hut was most popular back then from what I read online.

Redbox came along and said fuck you to rental stores.

For me, it was Hollywood video.

Mainly because I knew a employee and got their free game rentals.

Was Movie Gallery a big chain? Photos are way more aesthetic. That's what I thought Blockbuster would be. It looks depressing.

It was shit. Entire walls dedicated to the latest feature films (all checked out of course), terrible organization (all films were categorized Comedy, Drama, Action, or Horror), and good luck if you wanted to see anything foreign or outside of the mainstream. And newer films were due only 2 days later.

Pirating movies on the internet is infinitely superior.

Based zoomer. You're alright.

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What was the difference between Hollywood Video and Blockbuster?

based

They were designed to be ugly.
Get in pick your shit and go.

It was dumb and ugly
Only parroted here because of retarded nostalgiafags

Sounds like you just had a shit blockbuster.

Imagine browsing for movies on any device didn’t exist and you were a child so you only got to go look for movies / games when your parents would drive you. Browsing was exciting and a treat. Even if it was mostly shit (like it still is today) you usually went there with a movie in mind and hoped they had it. It was retarded having to return them because you had to go out of your way.

it died the literal second people had an alternative. there was nothing great or special about it. and there was always cum on the video boxes.

Before they died, my bb had a deal where I could pay 10 bucks and take any one thing in the store and I could freely switch out movies or games as many times as I wanted for 1 week. I probably helped kill bb way faster because of that.

Why could you only rent one video? And why not more than one movie on each vhs? Like if you wanted to watch Avengers and Age of Ultron, you had to rent one and come back and rent the sequel for $10? Downloading is so much better than that.

never again will you be spooked out by walking around the horror movie section

My local mom and pop closed before I ever got a peak behind the forbidden wildwest doors hidin the pornos

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the one i remember didn't have a seedy porno backroom, but a seedy porno catalog hidden under the counter, you had to ask for it

Hey dumbass, you can only fit so much shit on one tape without sacrificing quality

15 year olds fuck off

It was very whitebread American sub urban. Everything was very safe, genre stuff was middling at best. It was also pricey, they'd charge you 4 bucks and let you keep it for 'two nights' instead of 2 bucks for a single night, which soccer moms loved. The 'mom & pop' stores were usually better since they had weirder stuff, cheap one night rentals, and the 'room in the back'.

$5 got you 5 movies for five nights at mine.

Pretty comfy when I was a kid. Love just looking at movie covers for obscure/shitty horror movies.
>come back on its death knell some years later
>Halloween store rented the place out
>didn't even change the interior, just had costumes hanging from the video racks
>boarded up a few months later

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It was, until I loved to CT, then Dominoes was right next door. Dominoes had better mushrooms, the hut had better everything else.

It's called Netflix and redbox dumb zoomer

There was something called Video Ezy in Australia as competition. Now they are only DVD kiosks in super markets or chopping centres. Sad!

When they do something like that, they know it's the end. They're just trying to squeeze the last drops out a little quicker than they otherwise would.

As a kid, my parents always let me rent a movie or two form Blockbuster. Between that and cable, you had plenty of shit to eat your candy with your friends to.

fuck blockbuster..never liked that place..we had videos movies to go and some other store in my community..blockbuster comes in and they go out..opening a video store was a dream for every movie lover..then big biz smell little people making a dollar and runs them out..im glad to see them in ruin..

I’m not really nostalgic for Blockbuster, aside from working at one real briefly, I’m more nostalgic for the mom and pop video stores my area had before the Blockbuster moved in.

West Virginia here. Usually lurk. Saw post asking about Blockbuster. Used to go every weekend. My oldest cousin Jenny worked there as a manager for about two years? He wouldn't give me and my brothers discounts but if we called him at the store after he arrived he'd maybe set aside a new title, not always. This was about 1996? When that movie Speed came out. I asked if I could have the big Speed bus cardboard thing inside his store. He said yeah but later tried to give me a small Speed poster of Keanu Reeves instead. Didn't want it, gave to one of my friends. Blockbuster was fun as hell. I used to steal candy near the counter sometimes. What happened if I remember is that originally Blockbuster was harder to get hired at, manager was the top. My cousin showed me a test they gave all applying employees about movies, mostly new movies, but also a question was "Name one movie directed by the great Alfred Hitchcock." "What is your favorite movie from director Steven Spielberg's and explain your choice in two sentences?" Jenny got fired later around 1998, after a new employee said he cursed at him. By then Blockbuster was absolutely disgusting. Anybody remember? This was before movies on your TV. And I don't mean just this store. All. What happened according to my cousin the testing stopped and I'm serious, it was at all locations, suddenly lots of blacks and hispanics started getting hired. They knew nothing about movies, and couldn't do the job. We had to drive all the way back with our mom because we had been given the wrong tape or DVD. This happened more than once. Always a new employee. The carpet was worn out. Like the blue and yellow had been left out in the sun. I think Blockbuster ended up getting way too motherfucking cocky like it could never go out of business. Seemed like customers really hated it by then. I missed our local 'ma and pop' video stores but by then they were all out of business. Times change but not as fast as people say. Every couple years.

Just a place to spend time with the family. Go there with the parents, run around the store and look for movies or games

Don't lie you orphan faggot

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Reminder: every Alamo Drafthouse now has a Video Vortex movie rental store and you can check out thousands of movies *for free.*

deadline.com/2019/07/alamo-drafthouse-partners-with-vidiots-to-add-video-vortex-in-la-1202645547/

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Does anything say 20/30-something Boomer more than being nostalgic for a dead chain movie rental store?

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The late fees made it a nightmare. There finally was a lawsuit that forced them to just charge people the cost of the movie instead of exorbitant late fees and replacement fees which improved things.

What was pretty cool was the browsing. You had this giant selection of movies and could browse through to find something fairly different than what you might've been used to. You don't exactly have that now as search engines for movie sites try tailoring things for what will be most popular or most to your liking. You aren't as likely to find some cheesy movie just sitting there that you end up checking out because you have nothing better to do.

I used to work at one, ama

>You had this giant selection of movies
They had walls literally FULL of the same fucking title, retard

Date night with HS goth cutie, walk together to the Blockbuster, spend 45 mins walking around the store and discussing the movies we say and riffing on cover art, buy movie themed popcorn bag, buy candy, order a pizza, make out while watching the movie.
Fuck streaming services.

Nah, rental places I'd go to only did some big rack of the same movie for new releases, then they'd sell the excess as used videos while only keeping a few of the same titles. Effect was they'd whittle down the selection a bit so you had a wide variety of movies.

and to think, they could have bought Netflix, if only to kill the baby in the crib, we would all still be using the excuse

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- most rented movies during your tenure?
- craziest night?
- any employees or customers screw in the bathrooms?
- best perk of job?
- did anyone ask for refund bc movie was horrible?
- notice any corporate changes for the worse?
- were you aware of Netflix or the internet posing a threat? did you imagine BB always existing?
- was BB the best place att or did you prefer other local stores? What were they if so

it was a giant chain, so it had great selection yet still maintained a warm, relaxed atmosphere. Physically going there and getting to browse through actual aisles was fun and exciting as a kid. Ignoring the wall to wall new releases and reading the descriptions on cases in different sections, looking for some hidden gems. as good as netflix is, you generally get big releases and and b-movie trash. like others are saying, it was truly comfy and really brings you back. the one in my town turned into some stuffy, trendy, fusion noodle restaurant. literally the opposite vibe of the blockbuster. makes me sad.

It's pathetic because any kid back then, you could see his excitement at Netflix's DVDs in the mail. But Blockbuster execs were that fucking clueless! My sisters and I used to fight over the DVDs were requested, because I always burned copies and wanted more obscure stuff like Bad News Bears, Hudson Hawk and Waxwork.

>buy Blockbusters copy of Fast Times during liquidation
>tape goes fuzzy and fucked over the scenes with nudity
>obviously JO'ed to by hundreds of strangers
They preferred the dugout scene to the pool scene

Are you fucking retarded or do you really think those are obscure?

It was a store like any other, only their shelves had movies and video games on them that you would rent and take home and go back to return in a week. People are nostalgic for it because it was exciting to go to blockbuster and being able to pick out a movie to watch and a game to play, but it was nothing special really. It went out of business because it was much less convenient.

How do you justify liking Blockbuster Video when it literally killed thousands of actually comfy local kino rental stores that had personality and originality? It's like defending McDonalds over Five Guys.

Hollywood Video was a big chain that challenged blockbuster but had barely half the number of locations

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Five Guys is also a souless chain in which every store looks identical

Convenience isn't everything

Obscure back then for my age, buttfucker.

You could rent two movies at a time, at least at mine
>Like if you wanted to watch Avengers and Age of Ultron
Then you should probably kys

>They preferred the dugout scene to the pool scene
>preferred watching Jennifer Jason Lee basically get raped by a 80's chad over Phoebe Cates throw herself at a beta dork

For movies and video games it is. When you can download it and stream it from home why would you want to drive to a store?

Can you describe Hollywood vs Blockbuster? Hollywood has a cool vibe in pictures. How were they different? Was Hollywood the "rich person" store? Or considered "ghetto."

thinking back it was weird how often we had to go outside to get stuff.

Also it is true that Blockbuster often showed movies in the store that you could watch in full for free?

Fuck me how old are you?

i remember the carpet
the colors were so relaxing?

Yeah, again, no, it's not. When people are waxing nostalgic, it's always about the community these kinda places provided. I certainly wouldn't have been the same kid I was if I wasn't over at Watchdog Video every fucking weekend.
Non-autistic people like human things.

I think BB was like Subway, they were willing to sell a franchise to anyone, so you could drive past 4 strip malls along the same major road and everyone would have a BB. If you went out of business, oh fucking well, BB got your franchise fee and their cut.Hollywood was a little more cautious I think.

Pussy will soon be a robot stored at home too.

>go to blockbuster friday night to get the new release you've been waiting all week to see
>it's all rented out
>it's all rented out at the 3 other locations you call
It was shit. Nostalgiafags are shit.

what will the feminist do then?

who said blockbuster was good?

he didn't cut out from work early or have his GF go for him

Who will make the first Zoomer time travel kino?

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>Watchdog Video
Was this a BB competitor?

i had no other video stores near me and blockbuster was around the corner. i saw maybe one hollywood video in my entire childhood.

You're not wrong.

I’m nostalgic for late fees.

You're not a zoomer sweatie.

Ok? So you're nostalgic because you made friends there. Either way my point stands, it's nothing special and people are nostalgic for it. Blockbuster went out of business because normal people didn't go to blockbuster to socialize and make friends, they went there because it was the only way to watch movies they wanted to see and when more convenient options started rising blockbuster went out of business because there was no point to go. You'll have to make friends somewhere other than a blockbuster, sorry pal.

Except that can't be true. I know for a fact Blockbuster didn't move into an area unless it had a track record with other successful rental stores. They moved in only to conquer, not do the initial legwork. It was a corporate takeover every time.

I remember Hitch being super popular, speiblergs war of the worlds as well
Crazy night..... idk... uh... every weekend, it sucked.
I tried to fuck a fat big tit girl that was my boss, but that didnt happen, she was mormon
Perk, uh, I stole candy and a game or a movie or two, but not as many as I should have. Some yu-gi-oh cards.
People did ask for refunds for bad movies, we didn't do that
Everything got worse like every few months. Idk what the company did wrong, but old employees talked about the free shit they used to get and that all went away
threat? I was a kid, I didn't give a fuck, I worked there, I didn't make it my life
There were other video stores, ours was just kind of centrally located. When the BB died down the other stores around it got less busy. It kind of killed a super market near it.

Yea Forums circa 2040
>Dudette, remember shopping for 4K tvs at Walmart? My Mom1 would help me pick one out while Mom2 stayed in our Tesla, remotely attending the Michelle Obama international victory parade. She got mad when the Walmart wagies touched the gullwing doors to strap the tv in. Only because they were black immigrants who didn't flirt with her.

>Walmart was pretty based! I loved getting a cricket pizza after from Onions Utopia. Scrumptious! I miss watching tv screens, it felt more communal than Amazon's optic 4D projection.

Absolute fucking dog shit. Netflix asspounded it into the dirt for a reason.
>new releases for video games and movies NEVER in stock but you're already there so you rent some mildly interesting garbage from 6 months ago instead
>insane late fees, oftentimes cheaper to just buy the specific film you want
>50% chance of the VHS or disk you rented being damaged dogshit that barely plays
Blockbuster was great if you were the kid and you didn't have to worry about the logistics/consequences of renting and paying for the media. Some of my strongest nostalgia for the 90s and early 2000s is going to Blockbuster with my friend and one of our parents and picking out a game to play. But as an adult I can say God damn I'm glad we've moved on from that service model.

When I was growing up, there were multiple video rental store options in my area.
One was a Betamax store.
The next was a small chain that carried a lot of art house films in addition to the usual blockbusters.
There was another art house video store a bit further away.
There was also an independent mom and pop video store close by as well.
All of these places charged a deposit for a membership, with the art house video store at the highest, sometimes a few hundred dollars.
The independent mom and pop store charged the lowest deposit, that I think might cover their cost for one tape if you damaged or never returned it.
They allowed you to rent up to three tapes at a time though.
This was the store my parents chose to get a membership at.

Ehen blockbuster opened up they didn’t ask for a deposit for a membership.
You just needed to put a credit card on file with them.
So my parents switched to Blockbuster.

Blockbuster however charged $3 and then $4 per rental, for however many days, with a shorter rental period if the film was a “New Release”, and some films remained in the “New Release” section gor months or even over a year in some cases.
Blockbuster would charge you fees if you didn’t rewind.
They would charge you fees if you forgot to return a tape on time, and the fees were per day.
Honestly, they sort of screwed you with the extra fees.
Their selection of foreign movies wasn’t always great either.
Possibly one of the main advantages to Blockbuster was they got all sorts of B-movies and direct to video films you might not otherwise have heard of without the right cable channels.

Later Blockbuster got shitty and the staff got ruder.
I switched to the art house video store which had gone to a Netflix type monthly subscription fee.
Honestly it was much nicer than blockbuster ever was, and they still had obscure art house films that hadn’t been released on DVD.
Sadly, they’re no more as well.

You know how Netflix has just rows and rows and rows of shitty movies noone has ever heard of, a handful of mediocre to decent older movies, and like 4-5 "new releases"? It's kinda like that, but you have to walk around, pay about 10-20 bucks, and you're only allowed 3 or 4 movies at a time.

I am sure this has been said already (the captcha was screwing me over) but the one-two punch of (mail-in) Netflix and Redbox killed BB for me.
With Netflix I could put the old nostalgia movies in my queue; with RedBox I could rent the newest releases and some random kino for a dollar.
At that point I started using Blockbuster as a place to buy old used DVDs for like $10. And even there I could usually buy the same DVDs used elsewhere or even new at Walmart or Target.

What's the difference between coke and pepsi?

Tfw blockbuster introduced me to anime 29 years ago

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Yeah, I remember renting ye olde James Bond movies every Friday and stopping off next door at 7/11 for snacks. Good times. Great times, even.

Overpriced.

It was pretty good. Part of it is nostalgia, sure, but I'd rather drive to Blockbuster, get a good movie and watch it, then fuck around on Netflix instant trying to find a good movie and swimming around in a sea of shit movies trying to find a good one for 45 minutes and then giving up.

You'd just wander around and look at the new releases, which were a mixed bag of star trek voyager episodes and movies from six months ago, then you'd get The Usual Suspects, Shawshank Redemption, The Searchers, The Good The Bad and The Ugly, and Aliens like usual.

>I'd rather drive to Blockbuster, get a good movie and watch it, then fuck around on Netflix instant trying to find a good movie and swimming around in a sea of shit movies trying to find a good one for 45 minutes and then giving up.
This is an incredibly retarded fucking statement.

Used to walk a mile or so to the strip mall during the summer to see if Blockbuster had any Hard R spring break comedies and to see what latest SNES vidyas they had. Good times.

People born after 9/11 aren't going to understand the appeal to those of us born in the 80s. We didn't have internet or 1000 channels/netflix in a year like 1994. If you missed the movie in theaters you had to wait until the videostore got it.

It was more about getting out with your family and stopping by after dinner or a ball game. It was expensive and we knew it then, but you could talk the manager down sometimes off the late fees. We didn't know any different.

It was always warm and had a weird smell

it was amazing

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Netflix instant has garbage selection and the handful of good movies on there I've already seen.

Before Blockbuster--the mom n pop stores--THAT was the golden era. I had 3 near me--Video Update, Video Variety and Glengate Home Video. Later on as I explored, there was another "more artsy/indie" video store that had a shit ton of foreign films. But every one of them had "the back room" with the squeaky doors, so you could tell who was going in.

My whole experience was leaning about genres and--stuff I've never heard of before. I remember being a kid and discovering all that Italian gore stuff--like Cannibal Apocalypse and Antropophagus. And shockumentaries like Jabberwalk (This is America) and Shocking Asia. Snuck into the porn room at one spot and checked out covers for as long as I could without getting busted--New Wave Hookers still stands out.

THEN came Blockbuster and Hollywood, who basically shut everyone down--here's how they did it--they stocked all the same weird/odd stuff--AT FIRST--to get people's attention away from the mom n pops. As their base grew, they ditched the oddball stuff and loaded the store with the most mainstream shit you can think of. 40 copies of the latest romantic comedy. No depth. Once by one the older, cooler stores closed.

Then Netflix did it to Blockbuster...circle of life

Yea Redbox was truly the first nail in the coffin, when that got big Netflix was around but mostly did mail stuff and not a lot people used it. Somewhere in that weird middle section Blockbuster tried copying Redbox and then BOOM suddenly the idea of streaming shit from a website entered everyone’s minds and it was over

>And why did no chains rise up to challenge Blockbuster

Many did. They just didn't have the appeal. Hollywood Video and Movie Gallery come to mind. You could find a Hollywood Video in many places back in the day. It was probably the second largest brand.

For new releases that were in demand then yes obviously. But in my local shop there were a ton of shelves to browse other titles, in the center of the store or toward the back. I imagine smaller hole in the wall blockbusters did not have as much but again that's a given. For me I could walk into a Blockbuster, spend a half hour inside and never look at the newer titles.

Hollywood could be pretty ghetto. It depends on the neighborhood, some of them had over the top presentation in nicer areas. I was younger and can't remember the membership details because it was over 15 years ago. I enjoyed the Blockbuster I went to more because of the staff and it was bigger.

This exactly. Half the appeal wasn't the store itself so much as it was the climatic build up in the months between waiting for something then actually going in to rent it.

This was another thing, searching through dozens of games to see what they had in, looking at the boxes like the fucking child that I was, taking 25 minutes to decide what I wanted to spend a few days playing before I had to take it back.

I want to go back to the 90s and never come back

limited choice of movies, mum would also only let you get one or two. comfy store. comfy times. oh and nostalgia for being a kid

I worked at one.

A guy had a seizure in the parking lot and drove his van through our windows.

Had a double take at that image.

>What was Blockbuster Video like?
It's been dead for less than a decade. How old are you?

It was my first job when I was 17. I worked there all summer so I could build my first PC for Warcraft 3.

I dreamed that I was old.

Bait harder, you have to be like under 15 to not remember blockbuster

Hollywood video was better.

Cheapest way to pirate back then during the slow internet days.

What movie did he pick?

Mario Kart.

I think he was somalian so probably the gods must be crazy.

It was sorta fun being there as a kid... You'd look around and try to find something specific, or you'd just look around and see if you could find something interesting based off the cover art (and maybe plot on the back)... All the while these hanging t.v's would be playing trailers of recently released movies... Sorta cozy and fun like image hunting/collecting on Yea Forums, but far less shit.

After a while of being cooped up there though, it'd get boring and I'd wanna go home already.

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Hollywood Video was comfier than Blockbuster

Did blockbuster have a porn section? My local video place (Videoteket) did. I never made use of it.

No.

>friday night
>beg your parents to take you and your friend to blockbuster
>they finally say yes
>drive to blockbuster
>brightly lit, carpeted vacuumed, air-conditioned
>run around the store fooling around
>walk quickly through the horror section to avoid seeing that box that always scares you
>can't pick a movie
>parents telling you to hurry up
>get serious about choosing
>dad leaves to wait in the car and listen to the radio
>finally pick a movie
>take it to the register
>beg mom for candy and popcorn
>employee cracks a joke
>check out
>hop in the car
>drive home
>go to the den
>dim the lights
>kick off shoes
>open the box
>it's the wrong movie

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Shame. Could have saved them.

Kek, was very relatable until that last part.

We had two competing small chains in my town, one of them outlived Blockbuster but then failed 6 months later.

i feel like some buzzfeed-tier faggot in how much i relate to this

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I frequented another local rental chain called "Movies-To-Go". They had a deal where you could rent 6 movies (limit 2 new releases and 1 or 2 videos games) for 6 days. It was a Summer tradition during the mid-90's.

>ride bike to Movies-To-Go, with empty backpack
>start with 2 new releases, usually something advertised a lot that I hadn't gone to the theater to see
>go to video game section; had a playstation and N64; usually got rpg's and stealth/action games
>go to horror section; judge these based on cover art and scene caps on back
>go to comedy section; may get a modern one or a classic one (I loved Bob Hope)
>for last one, it was anything I felt like; often times I would look for something that had the possibility of nudity or sexy women
>after check out, head to grocery store on way home to pick up cheetos, doritos, 3-liter Shasta Rootbeer, candy bars (butterfingers, babe ruth), sour licorice
>next week, repeat

what a great testament to the human ability to create nostalgia around literally ANYTHING. blockbuster was shit, plenty of small, independent rental stores were comfy as fuck, but blockbuster was lame

that said, there's something to be said for the power of "family movie night" so i guess anything associated with that when you were a kid has solid nostalgia value

Excellent poast. Thread needs more detailed analysis like this.
>One was a Betamax store.
No idea what this is. Movies? Why use Beta for a store name? I do remember this place called Circuit City, shaped like a big red plug, they had lots of movies and games.

Betamax is a type of tape you dip

Did Blockbuster have a mascot, like a funny dog or cat that liked to watch movies with a family? Maybe a pet rabbit because seems like movies needed to be returned in a jiffy kek.

WHY did blockbuster not explore other avenues? They could of cornered the online streaming market and destroyed Netflix from the get go. WHY did they sit on their hands?

Was Hollywood video "coke"? Pretty certain. I would not have been a BB customer, maybe Hollywood Video, Movie Gallery or a non-chain. But I'd still like to know how these franchises offered better experiences to compete. The Hollywood Video storefront design is just so much cooler looking than BB's yet so see BB on tshirts now. Hollywood Video, that could be in a Tarantino movie, no one would say it didn't fit.

>Mum can we go back?

>No ya lil cuntye I've already hate me wine

>watch some arthouse dogshit film instead of Aliens Resurrection with my friends

Why did everybody go on Friday? If you were smart you'd go on Wed/Thurs to rent the new shit. I don't watch movies on weekends, usually weekdays to relax.

They eventually did the same as Netflix, but they were already bleeding money. Netflix started as a mailing service. I don't think they even thought they would be as big as they got.

But did you find out about The Usual Suspects without the internet? Did Blockbuster recommend movies in ads on tv or in the mail with coupons.

Blockbuster's CEO declined the offer to buy Netflix back in the day.

>during the summer to see if Blockbuster had any Hard R spring break comedies

Smells like bullshit, they required ID to rent R-rated movies unless you had a credit card as a kid. Culkin?

>Video Update, Video Variety and Glengate Home Video
Pics? There needs to be an official video store online archive to document them all. I bet few photos still exist of many.

Netflix was big in 2000.

>bought all of the The Lost Boys films on DVD during liquidation
Get a little sad every time I watch em

>My local video place (Videoteket)
These places failed because they all had similar weird names. Blockbuster is like Chad coming through. Videobeta btfo. Writing on the wall.

To be precise this wasn't actually blockbuster, but was the local Australian equivalent. Usual Suspects was in the new releases section one day, with a black and white photocopied cover as was usual for new releases. I liked the cover with the cool looking lineup so I gave it a try. Video stores didn't do any movie-specific advertising. They seemed to rely on people already being aware of new movies and to be waiting for them to arrive. Sometimes you would have little staff-recommends cards below some older movie on the shelf, you know like you get in bookstores or wine stores, with a description of the movie and why a particular staff member likes it.

>then what
???

You go back and get the correct movie.

A lot of movie theaters were carpeted, at the time. Rental places often strived to emulate the theater aesthetics, including the smell of popcorn

Based

I don't know if it was this way for anyone else but once a week (usually Friday) mom, dad, younger brother, and I would go down to blockbuster (30 minutes away) Spend an hour or so walking around picking a movie each. Mom and dad would usually get a drama, I would get a sci-fi or horror and my brother would get a kids movie or comedy. We'd spend the weekend, each night, watching a movie. Usually we'd watch mom and dads first, Saturday mine, and sunday brothers. I don't know. Mom and Dad worked a lot and there wasn't much time to spend together except for those few hours one the weekend. I wish now that I had paid more attention back then. Lots of laughs with the family.

It was also nice picking a movie without any reviews or people telling me what's good and what's not. I remember getting stuff like Hardware, The Jacket, or Deep Blue Sea. If I watched those now, with the internet, I'd more than likely blow them off as trash. It was nice, now I can't see amovie without already having an idea of what to expect (Once upon a Hollywood/IT/Midsommar).

if i rented Earthbound on Friday evening, I could beat it by the time it had to be back Sunday evening.
i did this several times in the mid 90s

It was comfy but there was that thing where u spent like 5 hours in one trying to find shit to watch and Ur dads getting pissed u're taking so long aspect cuz too many choices

It seemed like more movies were being released then. And there was absolutely no SJW shit at Blockbuster, unless you count Philadelphia or School Ties. I'm not sure if LGBT plots had their own section or were outright banned regardless of PG13 rating. NC17 and Unrated films were typically banned from Blockbuster, which emphasized family. I always wondered if anyone had a Blockbuster next to a Toys R Us in a shopping complex. That had to be nuts.

>And why did no chains rise up to challenge Blockbuster?
Are you retarded? Blockbuster killed all the video rental stores like Starbucks killed all the cafes, why the fuck are Americans this fucking dumb?

>How do you justify liking Blockbuster Video when it literally killed thousands of actually comfy local kino rental stores that had personality and originality?
My town had around half a dozen local video stores before the BB rolled around, and then they dropped like flies. The local stores really were more 'comfy', 'kino', etc. I have more nostalgia for those stores than the BB

Only young Millennials look upon it fondly. Us older, smarter folk know that the smaller, mom-and-pop rental stores were leagues better. Blockbuster kept raising prices and generally being kikey. And, like you said, their stores had the aesthetic of a Kmart.

All the mom and pop and gas station video rentals folded pretty quickly. I remember the first movie I rented came from a gas station. It was Willow, and I think I crossed the street alone the first time to get it.

Yep. And the shitty thing about BB was, that once they dominated and put 95% of other rental stores out of business, they went into full Jew mode and started raising prices and determining what movies were fit for the general public, etc... For a while there, your only option, unless you wanted to mail-order something specific, was BB or ...... BB.

>you will never rent an xbox from the local video store for a weekend and play the original battlefront splitscreen with your brother again

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DO YOU KNOW THAT TRANQUIL, SECULAR, «COZINESS», THAT ONE FEELS WHEN BROWSING IN A LIBRARY, OR IN A BOOKSTORE? BROWSING IN «BLOCKBUSTER» WAS LIKE THAT, BUT WITH «MOVIES» INSTEAD OF BOOKS.

We had Hollywood Video and Mr. Movies. Mr. Movies actually hung in there for a while, but an experiment into trying to create a Gamestop competitor as an attachment to the store ended up flopping. I pretty much managed to walk away with most of the Indigo League Pokemon VHS tapes from their closing sale.

Pretty much all video stores do that.

it smelled like plastic and rotten gym socks and all the good shit was always rented out so you'd almost always have to get some dumbass B movie or something you'd already seen 50 times. the tapes and cases were always grimy with other people's filth and half the time the tapes were fucked up and you'd have to go get a replacement. the candy was stupidly overpriced just like a theater.

I miss it's dying days when they just had the monthly charge, and you just walked in exchanged movies and games.

>tfw the local video rental place got shut down for selling bootleg movies.

>Why could you only rent one video?
You were allowed to rent as many movies at a time as you wanted, zoomzoom. Most parents just limited their kids to one.

How big is your dick?

What's your favorite soup?

hollywood video had cool props in their store, posters and shit like that
blockbuster kinda did, it had that musty smell around the store always and im pretty sure the back room had porn rentals

Did black people ruin Blockbuster? I imagine if you lived anywhere near blacks, the store was less safe, way louder, trash on carpet, and worst of all the videotapes would be dirty and possibly smell like cocoa butter and dudeweed.

Are there birds in Canada?

>Mr. Movies vs Blockbuster
Are you a nigger lmao?

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Pure hype with the family, sometimes older cousins were with you.
You can replace that with family meetings, nothing too big

LGBT plots would only be found in arthouse films in those days.

Mr. Movies suffered from depression. That lowercase font isn't fooling anyone.

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I remember Blockbuster having those orange "must be 17 to rent" on some anime titles, my grandmother took me once to BB to grab some movies to watch at her house when I stayed a couple weeks for the summer and those fucking stickers ruined my selection choices.

>Hardware, The Jacket, or Deep Blue Sea
Your dad like these? He sat there and watched them? My dad only watched Two and a Half Men reruns, he hates movies.

Fuck...this sounds like GameStop

mass access to movies in your house was new.

yeah - we'd had cable, but you were stuck with HBO's schedule. when everyone could afford a VCR, it was a huge step forward to just be able to go somewhere and rent whatever you want and watch it when you wanted.

Blockbuster wasn't the greatest fun in the world, but everyone also wasn't in some super hurry and spending a half hour or so to go get the movie you wanted wasn't an inconvenience. picking out a movie was usually a social group thing, too.

It was great, and definitely made movie night special. Jumbo video was my go to place because you got free popcorn while you browsed.
Also during the vhs era there was always an area blocked off by a curtain that had all the pornos.

As someone who lives right next to a video rental store (Family Video) that was on par with, if not better than Blockbuster and Movie Gallery, I can safely say that they're highly overrated.
Outside of horror movies, you'll have a really hard time finding anything worth renting and watching. The employees are nice and the environment is relaxing, but that's really all it has over torrenting whatever you feel like watching. I don't play video games anymore, so the game rental doesn't factor into my assessment of the stores.

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One simple reason - unlike local stores, the mega corporate blockbuster had the ability to buy up new releases to the point where they would “guarantee” they would have first-Run DVDs so there was virtually no doubt you’d be able to see the exact movie you want at home this weekend.

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F@m it's like Walmart and Target. It was the same shit.

There was a rental place in Tallahassee FL that was still there several years ago near Florida State. And this place primarily rented VHS! There was a diner or sandwich place inside the rental store. Families were still going there together. I was in shock.

Movie Gallery became the second biggest and it started in fucking Dothan, Alabama. I liked it over BB.
There was a Movie Gallery, Hollywood Video, and BB in my town. It wasn't that kind of monopoly.

Younger millennials didn't have to pay for it so it didn't make much difference.

This your Jumbo?

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>Family Video
I work at a Family Video and it's quite a Kafkaesque venue. I remember the Hollywood Videos to be a lot better, never went to a Family Video until when I applied to one.

Or is this like your Jumbo? Man all these places are comfy.

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t. 16 year old

It was peak comfy, poorfag friendly, and endless possibilities for fun or disappointment.

>Family Video
Who the hell is your customer base in le current year? Nursing home people and perverts? Are there literally hundreds of Family Video still open?

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The smell of plastic VHS cases fills your nose, the sunset shining through the window. You're browsing for the movie you're about to take home, reading the back of the demo cases. excited to get home and watch in the pale pink carpeted living room with cream colored artificial leather couches.. Ah, the 90s.

HOPE

DREAMS

AND PRETTY KINO CASHIERS WORK THERE.

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Read that sign
>Report Card A's Equals Free Rentals
It's all gone, gone forever! Fucking likes killed my nation! No kids are on iPhones all fucking day.

I 'member going to the local blockbuster, getting vidya for xbox to play with bruz, and kino (that you had no clue was about), to watch on the weekend.

Life was good.

Why do 30-year-old boomers write like they're in a Kevin Smith movie?

it was fucking garbage and they sent collections on me for a fucking $11 late fee

Remember when everyone thought the future was that everyone can keep a copy of their favorite movie and watch them whenever they feel like it? Funny how live streaming and always online games is now the future.

>the local Australian equivalent.
How big was Crocodile Dundee when it hit home video down under? Was the sequel bigger?

A bit before my time but I believe it was huge.

There was nothing that special about. Perhaps the only appeal was physically choosing the video you want to watch, just as reading a paper book is more satisfying than an e book.

Blockbuster itself was widely regarded as shit and expensive in its day, but they were the most widespread so they make a good reference point for threads like this. I lived far enough out that non-chain rental places survived for a while separated by 10 miles or so, and it was nice having BB as a backup option if we were looking for something specific, but that was it. I don't think anyone liked going there specifically.

People always go on about how great Blockbuster was, and how nostalgic they are for Blockbuster, and blah fucking blah. They went out of business for a reason, and if they reopened today, they would go out of business all over again.

I get it. Being young and walking in amazement around Blockbuster was cool. It was fun. But "better"? No. In comparison to modern conveniences, it doesn't even come close. They are relics for a reason.

And physical media fucking sucks. VHS tapes were shit, and DVDs were so fragile and prone to skipping I'm amazed they stuck around for as long as they did. Renting a DVD from Blockbuster was a coin-flip on whether or not you'd get a watchable movie or a stuttering broken piece of shit.

In Mexico we had Video Centro and several independent video stores.

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It was like going to the library today. In fact, my local library has a shit ton of movies.

Who else raided their Blockbuster's entire collection during liquidation?

>And physical media fucking sucks.
t. zoomer who enjoys not actually owning anything

Why is everything in Mexico so ugly without irony or awareness? True though, I've never contemplated that movie rental stores must still be cutting edge there. When did you get the first ones, around 2005?

based schizo poster

I mean Japan's entire television DVD industry is basically rental only. As such, their rental places are still booming.

You didn't own Blockbuster rentals either you fucking cretin.

I did after liquidation :^)

yeah I loved owning easily broken media which took up lots of space
much better than digital files
w e w

Was Halloween a big deal each year at Blockbuster? Did they give out candy and have big displays of horror?

>tosses disc at wall
>wahhh why is it broken
Try not being a spaz.

>digital files > DVDs
Kid, digital files get corrupted, hard drives are lost or smashed or stolen. You're rarely seeing the version of a movie as it's meant to be seen unless you copped it from iTunes. Problem with your generation like user said you place no value in ownership and private property. You don't own digital files, it's like owning fleas. Come and go. Hard to find. Whereas I have roughly 1200 DVDs, not all are on display and I have 6 copies of Lawrence in Arabia, two are doubles of the Blu. Holding physical media, the art, the design, the booklets with history, the insane special features and commentaries that are digitally missing, this simply cannot be called inferior. Would you rather fuck or jerk off? Don't answer that, it was rhetorical.

Rogers Video in Canada

No, it wasn't good, but people are nostalgic for a comfier era. Streamed television is more convenient, but Blockbuster represents time spent with your family, talking with others, having a community, the joys of random discovery, etc in a less polarized world.

How much was it to rent a literal leaf for entertainment purposes?

lol just make your own digital files from your own shit. There, now you own both, and they're in better quality.

If you live in edmonton check out The Lobby

The Walmart comparison is really apt, it was sorta shit.
All these boomers waxing nostalgic are sporting rose coloured glasses.

Not really any more than most stores decorate for holidays now. Making it a horror movie night wasn't a major thing outside of some teenagers that were too old to trick or treat, most adults still remembered that it was all cheap garbage and holed up with something unrelated to forget the holiday if they didn't want anyone knocking on their door.

Youve never rented from a blockbuster

based

You didn’t care about the asthetic as a kid. It’s just where you spent a decent amount of time and had good memories. A lot of times you’d go with friends to pick shit for a sleepover. Sometimes you’d run into friends there. You’d rent games there, too. My Movie Gallery had a pizza pro in it. The back left corner smelled like something died all the time for some reason. Being intrigued by movie covers and just wandering around without your parents. Going after games as a reward for winning or doing whatever or getting good grades. Kind of feels like a lost piece of community but it is what it is.

As a kid it was fun, but they had some jewish policies. Their rental prices were super high because usually no competitors (and the competitor we had nearby had the same selection for half-price).

A lot of their disc games were always scratched beyond repair. The staff was usually pretty bored and disinterested with everything. Their selection wasn't even close to comparable to what we have now.

Honestly, piracy and streaming killed them for a good reason. But Boomers will always have nostalgia for those Crunchbars and weekend rentals, and they deserve to have those.

Why is your male cousin named Jenny? Was he hot?

it was shit
>rainchecks
>rewinding
>returns
>scratched discs come DVD era
nothing more comfy than walking 15 minutes to return a movie in the rain after school. or wanting to watch a movie but it is out to you try rogers video for the same result and you now wasted a tonne of time. The nostalgia is misplaced bullshit. there is a reason it died, and modern options are way better.

Where does the scratched DVD meme come from? Literally never scratched any disc in my collection to the point where it won't play, and I've used them many, many times over the years. Are there really animals out there who can't handle a disc without breaking it, or were rental niggers just that careless?

You said it, the blacks scratched rental DVDs like they were deejays. You could sometimes tell, as others said, that blacks had rented a copy of a movie. It just felt unclean and soiled, and scratched all to hell.

Some of them would be pretty beat or have the wrong movie in the case but I don't think I ever got a tape or dvd that straight up didn't work. Your mileage may vary depending on where you live though.

Tbqhwy I might have had children with a girl if we could all go to Blockbuster together on Friday nights for a decade or more.

>I have roughly 1200 DVDs
oh no no no HAHAHAHAHAHAHAH

I seriously can't imagine actually driving out and buying/renting a movie or two to take home and watch instead of just going to the theater, seeing it and leaving or streamlining/torrenting it at home.

People lived like literal cavemen back then, it's the weirdest shit like watching someone using a washboard to do their laundry or sending smoke signals to their neighbors.

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This is a retarded argument.
>digital files can be corrupted and HDD die!
Sure but it's literally free to make copies of the file and put it on multiple sources, I've been through over a dozen PCs and twice as many hard drives since I was a kid and I still have mp3 files that I downloaded from Napster, because they exist as copies on a dozen different clouds, thumb-drives etc.
>you can burn DVD's to your PC
And you can just as easily burn digital files to a disk (though there's no point, a USB drive would be more efficient in every way) so how is this a point against digitization in favor of hard disks?

>there was always cum on the video boxes.
Were you renting porn?

I'm old enough that I rented porn on VHS a few times

absolutely based and prune-pilled post

Home movies were rarer at the time, no youtube, no netflix, no internet. So what we take for granted today had to be something you and the family drove out to do. And while you're there you see and smell all the snack items and look at all the covers, which is what you decided based on so it was really hit or miss but watching a b movie with the family is fun, especially if you're comitted as a gorup because you put the time in

Hollywood Video did in my neck of the woods. In fact I went there more than Blockbuster

Always thought it was because movie theaters are carpeted in the lobby/halls

Yeah, surprisingly my family is pretty chill. His real love was Steven Segal and Clint Eastwood (which is fine, at least Clint Eastwood has some hits), but he'd always step out of his comfort zone and give shit a try. No subtitles though. I made him watch Lars and the Real Girl once and he always referred to it as "that fucking movie with the retard and his blow up doll."

Also left a copy of Black Swan laying around when I was older once, went to work at subway, and when I came home dad, mom, little brother, grandma, and aunt were watching Black Swan and just finished one of the sex scenes. Never been in such a quiet house, felt like a funeral home.

They usually just had weird genre movies rather than anything all that interesting.
I feel like certain stuff was a priority to get on shelves. Really mediocre genre films that did poorly in theaters were a big presence

Ironic cause Blockbuster struggled in my country. Video Ezy was the biggest franchise.
And OP Video Shops were comfy back in the 90s. I liked it simply for the atmosphere and id bump into friends from school and we would exchange advice on what to rent.
My local video shop would have 60+ people in the shop in the evenings on the weekend. It probably sounds stupid and pointless with instant downloading now, but you miss out on the experience of going out to get what you want.