[HN Gopher] Plano man keeping Blockbuster alive
___________________________________________________________________
Plano man keeping Blockbuster alive
Author : cereallarceny
Score : 197 points
Date : 2022-07-10 04:40 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.dallasnews.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.dallasnews.com)
| shyn3 wrote:
| Funny someone is doing the same with Radioshack and Crypto [0].
|
| [0] https://www.radioshack.org/
| crisopolis wrote:
| No, RadioShack brand is just being used for a trend. Not even
| related to keeping their technology or stores open/alive in
| 2022.
|
| RIP RadioShack
| TheRealDunkirk wrote:
| Brand necrophilia.
| pcthrowaway wrote:
| Not only that, the person behind defiling the brand is none
| other than Tai Lopez (the "here in my garage ... KNOWLEDGE!"
| guy)
| rascul wrote:
| In 2007 I was in the US Army, deployed to the Middle East. (My
| memory is a bit hazy, it could have been my 2009 deployment
| instead.) Netflix was shipping DVD's to rent but they wouldn't
| ship to my APO AE address. I discovered that Blockbuster had a
| similar program, and they would ship to my APO AE address. So for
| six months or so, I was renting movies from Blockbuster on the
| other side of the world.
| jefurii wrote:
| I wish they had included pictures of his hardware.
| ezekg wrote:
| I miss Blockbuster. We had a small haven here called Family
| Video, but they unfortunately closed down due to the COVID
| lockdowns/lack of foot traffic. It was my family's spot to grab a
| Friday night movie and snacks, even through the pandemic. We were
| super bummed to see it go. Streaming just doesn't match the
| experience of browsing movies IRL. We'd usually leave with a few
| movies to watch that week, including a kids movie for the kids.
| We typically give up on endlessly browsing Netflix/etc. for
| something interesting and fall back to our "usual." Boring.
|
| Hoping similar stores make a resurgence someday.
| bombcar wrote:
| Our rental store closed before Covid (the owner basically got
| tired of it and retired, it wasn't a big money-maker, so nobody
| took over). Our theater died just after Covid.
|
| I wonder if you could combine them into some kind of "movie
| mishmash" where you could see new movies in the theater, rent
| older classics, or even buy new releases. Being able to stop
| in, grab a movie and hot popcorn, and drive home seems it could
| be a winner.
| s1mon wrote:
| I read this title as "Piano man..." several times until my brain
| finally parsed it correctly. It made for very curious thoughts on
| an alternate future involving Billy Joel.
| antonymy wrote:
| It's like the business version of the Byzantine Empire.
| metadat wrote:
| Un-paywalled: https://archive.ph/jotV3
| roywashere wrote:
| Thanks. Not only is the original link paywalled it is also not
| accessible from EU because GDPR and they think it is easier to
| block us than to not have so much third party cookies or such
| :sad:
| dj_mc_merlin wrote:
| Weird, from EU also, not paywalled nor geofenced for me.
| nibbleshifter wrote:
| The geofence code only kicked in when I was about halfway
| through the article.
|
| Seems buggy as fuck.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| Blame your government. The only thing that the 99 section/11
| chapter GDPR accomplished was to make the web worse with
| shitty Cookie notices.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Websites don't need notices if they're not doing anything
| shady or unnecessary tracking, and just about every cookie
| notices I see is going against either the wording or the
| intent of the law.
|
| If they want to be annoying on purpose, we should blame
| them, not the GDPR.
| nibbleshifter wrote:
| GDPR has proven incredibly useful to me and others in
| imposing cost on organisations and businesses that want to
| fuck about with our data.
|
| Someone's acting the maggot? No matter where they are, they
| get a subject access request. Followed by a request to
| correct or delete data.
|
| The ability to legally force companies to _correct_
| inaccurate data is incredibly useful.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| Or you can just click on "Reader View" from Safari....
| tingletech wrote:
| "Reader View" from Safari only shows the first paragraph of
| this story for me
| noduerme wrote:
| I run IT for a franchise chain. All requests to me are supposed
| to come through corporate, but franchisees and sometimes managers
| and even front desk employees try to do end-runs and get directly
| to me with software issues, local networking issues, etc. I want
| to stress how difficult this would be for one person to manage,
| and how much work for little pay it probably was if it was based
| on service contracts with individual stores. At least, when there
| were 30 independent Blockbusters left. Now it's probably pretty
| chill.
| zw123456 wrote:
| I am old enough to remember when the wife would call me at work
| on a Friday and say hey, stop by the video store and get a movie
| for tonight and I'll stop and get wine and take out. What was
| special was the "Dave" at the video rental place (it wasn't
| blockbuster but whatever). I don't recall the guy's name, but he
| always remembered me and what we liked and had great suggestions
| and sometimes if you said, nah but how about something completely
| different, he would always find us something great. Or usually
| (one time he recommended Eraser head, we still laugh about that
| one, so even though it was a dud, great memory).
|
| I get it, today's AI is pretty good, meh, not really, but it
| would be hard to beat my old "Dave". Maybe someday.
| dontcontactme wrote:
| I think there's something to be said for the interaction
| involved in getting a recommendation from a human. An AI might
| recommend movies just as well as Dave did, but you presumably
| like Dave and enjoy talking to him about the movies you've
| seen. You don't get that part of the experience with an AI
| recommendation.
| Johnny555 wrote:
| _today 's AI is pretty good_
|
| It's pretty good at suggesting exactly the same type of movies
| you've watched before, but not so good at those "but how about
| something completely different, but something that I'll still
| like" suggestions, that's where a real human movie buff can
| help.
| ryangittins wrote:
| I've long pondered building exactly this, an anti-
| recommendation engine. You'd go through and mark some
| favorite films or genres, and it'd come back with something
| great but totally unlike your usual picks.
|
| Foreign flicks not your thing? Try Parasite.
|
| You don't remember what it's like to be an awkward pre-teen?
| Eighth Grade will remind you.
|
| Not a big action movie person? Maybe you need to watch Die
| Hard.
|
| Kids movies are just for kids? Spirited Away!
|
| You can't connect with female protagonists? You've got to see
| The Invisible Man.
|
| Don't find food interesting? Try Tampopo.
|
| Sick of movies which try to make a statement and fall flat?
| Promising Young Woman.
|
| Most dramas feel too contrived? Marriage Story.
|
| Musicals and plays aren't really your thing? Hamilton.
| actusual wrote:
| This isn't completely true. What you're talking about are
| called "echo chambers" or "filter bubbles", and there are
| ways to make sure they don't negatively impact users.
|
| Additionally, studies have found that (when A/B testing
| recommender system vs no recommender system) users create
| their own, more localized "echo chambers" in absence of a
| recommender. This is measured by the "diversity" of content
| consumed, which decreases if a user is their own recommender.
| h0l0cube wrote:
| > This is measured by the "diversity" of content consumed,
| which decreases if a user is their own recommender.
|
| The recommender in the GP and OP is a video store clerk,
| that's probably self selected into that kind of job by
| their special interest in movies
| usrn wrote:
| I haven't thought about it but most of the movies I've really
| enjoyed were recommended to me by my dad, girlfriend, or my
| brother in law. I can't think of anything I really enjoyed
| from a recommendation algorithm. The last movie I tried I
| certainly didn't enjoy.
| jvalencia wrote:
| The reality is likely that the algorithms are trying to
| increase viewership, not quality of views. So they are
| likely to feed you things that get you to watch another
| thing, rather than things that are worth watching, leave
| you satisfied, and off doing something else.
| antiterra wrote:
| Eraserhead wasn't exactly a dud for me but it was deeply
| discomfiting and disturbing (clearly as intended.) Glad I've
| seen it, but very little interest in seeing it again.
| kylepdm wrote:
| I feel like the difference isn't so much that you have AI
| recommendations or that of a human, but rather the entire
| environment is fundamentally different.
|
| With Netflix or whatever Streaming Service you have you have an
| immense catalogue coupled with ease of access to get
| ratings/critiques/etc. There is so many things to choose from
| and it's so easy to just say "no" to a suggestion, and likely
| that thing you said "no" to will still be there tomorrow. Why
| not just keep browsing?
|
| With the video store of old it's so much more purposeful. You
| pick up a movie, and you feel incentivized to watch it because
| you literally just paid for it. You paid for that _one_ Movie,
| not access to the entire store (which you also need to
| physically go to, and then come all the way back home with a
| tape or dvd). Also the ubiquity of movie /tv reviews was not as
| present so you don't necessarily feel like you're making a bad
| choice.
| [deleted]
| another_story wrote:
| I think what a lot of us are missing is human interaction,
| especially with strangers. No one is going to reminisce about
| that time the Netflix algorithm recommended a movie to them.
| Interactions with others, the stories and sense of community
| that can come out of it, not to mention building social skills,
| is being lost.
|
| We're making a better world for consumers, but sometimes I
| wonder if it's a better world for people.
| sailfast wrote:
| What's the website equivalent of Dave? Surely it has to exist
| somewhere? Maybe it's not personalized for you but it's close
| enough for a lot of people?
|
| I've visited a TON of taste-making sites and some used to be OK
| at suggesting what to watch, but it's been tough to find good
| ones lately, and I'd pay good money for somebody to sort
| through all of the cruft for me.
|
| You've got your "decider" and other sites, but something more
| personal, or at least human curated in terms of "here is the
| canon of this genre" or "if you liked this you'll 1000% like
| this other thing"
| ck2 wrote:
| Have you ever seen the post with the person that accidentally
| stumbled into a film set with an old Blockbuster "revived", heh
|
| https://imgur.com/gallery/n1l3O58
| sevenf0ur wrote:
| Do you think he had to recreate blockbuster's central servers
| from scratch or did he get the blessing to maintain the old
| software?
| bombcar wrote:
| Blockbuster is old enough that they probably didn't have
| "central servers" as such, more like a local area terminal
| network that you'd manually update with CSV files when needed.
| awacs wrote:
| Growing up in the 80s with VHS, Betamax, Laserdiscs (if anyone
| recalls), and being a dj in the late 90s when the thought of a
| "USB stick instead of traveling with all this vinyl was an
| impossibility", makes this whole nostalgia tour a fun one. I
| think we all forget though just how poor the quality was back
| then, and what we've become accustomed to, with VHS being 240
| lines, DVD 480p, etc. It's like reminiscing about the first
| iPhone and then looking at one and realizing how damn small it
| actually was compared to modern versions.
|
| I started converting / collecting most of my movie collection
| onto a localized server years ago, and glad I did. Though I
| rarely watch all my old movies (a growing list of about 1000
| including most of my favorite TV shows), the end game I think we
| all know is everything streamed, with no actual ownership of
| content. It's not a terrible notion, but the problem I think
| we've all seen is it's now turned into a corporate ownership
| game, and you never know where the content you're interested in
| watching is. One day Star Trek is on Netflix, the next Paramount,
| etc.
|
| The only problem has been keeping up with resolution changes,
| even though I'm a firm believer in unless you're watching on
| something well over 100" a nice high-quality 1080P file looks
| just great on a large 85" tv (which I currently have).
| laumars wrote:
| > I think we all forget though just how poor the quality was
| back then
|
| I don't think anyone has forgotten how crappy VHS was/is.
|
| At least with vinyl, the sound quality was good even if the
| medium was bulky. But VHS just sucked in every way imaginable.
| Even in the 80s I hated VHS. It was the best we had but it
| always felt like a game of chance whether your recordings
| worked. I don't miss a single thing about recording and playing
| video back then.
|
| > The only problem has been keeping up with resolution changes
|
| A lot of the time content is just upscaled rather than
| remastered anyway. Particularly with TV shows but plenty of
| "HD" movies were just upscaled from DVDs rather than remastered
| from the original film rolls.
| jacobsievers wrote:
| I don't know, VHS Hi-Fi wasn't bad. It had a frequency
| response of 20Hz to 20kHz and signal-to-noise ratio about 70
| dB.
| michaelcampbell wrote:
| I've known guys in the past that kept audio recordings on
| VHS, just for that reason.
| laumars wrote:
| Maybe. That wasn't used by regular VHS rigs though was it
| (ie PAL or NTSC recordings)?
|
| I just remember VHS audio sounding muffled after the tape
| had been used a few times.
|
| To be fair, recording stuff from RF wouldn't have helped
| much either.
| rconti wrote:
| I ripped my entire DVD collection 15 years ago, and I just
| never watch any of it. If I want to watch one of the movies I
| just pay the $4 to 'rent' a 4k stream instead of suffering with
| DVD quality.
| BolexNOLA wrote:
| It's so funny reading this. I was remarking the other day to
| a friend how well I think DVD's hold up. Nothing to write
| home about, but definitely a solid level above "tolerable" to
| me.
| PenguinCoder wrote:
| Man I am the exact opposite. If I have had it on DVD, I've
| ripped it and I'd rather watch that, rather then pay $4 to
| rent any other stream of a product I already have.
| vlunkr wrote:
| It's interesting that when we revisit older movies, all the way
| up to the 90s, we're watching them at much much higher quality
| than we did originally. Special effects, costumes and sets are
| all much more believable when you're viewing them on a little
| grainy screen. I think some older movies are unfairly judged by
| how they look on hardware that couldn't have existed at the
| time.
| pessimizer wrote:
| It's part of the Progress Quest(tm) style transfer from
| audiophiles trying to maximize numbers to videophiles trying
| to maximize numbers. Audiophiles are listening to music in
| "better" quality than the people who made it had through
| their monitors, and people are watching movies in "better"
| quality than the directors saw their final cuts in.
|
| We're either moments before or moments after direct
| competition between UHD televisions and AI-aided upscaling
| and artificial sharpness, where details that never existed in
| the original are being precisely rendered by screens with
| higher resolutions than the human eye.
| larrywright wrote:
| There's a video floating around out there somewhere from the
| 80s show Knight Rider. One of the things about that car was
| that it could drive itself. I always assumed they used some
| sort of complex remote control system to film those scenes,
| but the video clearly shows that it's just a guy wearing a
| suit that looks like the seat in the car. I guess simple wins
| out over cool.
|
| EDIT: Here's a link to the tweet with the video. https://twit
| ter.com/BryanPassifiume/status/13356368964881203...
| rightbyte wrote:
| Theatres were a thing back then. But ye concerning TV you are
| right. My best example of that is playing Ocarina of Time on
| a big modern TV ... it was so much more impressive on a small
| ctr.
| vlunkr wrote:
| Yeah, video games are probably even worse off than movies.
| If you're playing on original hardware, most modern TVs
| don't scale them properly and they look terrible. There are
| external upscalers and RGB modding, but it's an expensive
| and esoteric thing to dig in to.
| amyjess wrote:
| For video games, there's another factor: much of the
| artwork in old-school games was _specifically_ designed to
| be altered by both CRT scanlines and NTSC composite
| effects. So many sprites in 2D games and textures in 3D
| games rely on NTSC effects to antialias the graphics and
| turn dithering into real gradients and you 're missing out
| on so much with a modern screen.
|
| The closest you can get to that experience now is to use an
| emulator and apply some heavy shaders (some emulators have
| built-in shaders, but if one doesn't I'd recommend
| installing reshade and setting up CRT-Royale and GTUv050).
| thanatos519 wrote:
| Television that was made on film has held up pretty well.
|
| I'm watching ST:TNG at 1080p now and it's visually stunning.
| Everything else about it is still awesome, too.
| jefftk wrote:
| Are you watching the original or the remaster?
|
| The latter was only possible because it was originally shot
| in film, yes, but it was also an incredible amount of work.
| They needed to reassemble every episode from film!
| Anthony-G wrote:
| They did a fabulous job of the Star Trek transfers (I'm
| currently watching the original series).
|
| However, some studios put very little effort into their
| film to HD transfers. Last year, I watched _Buffy, the
| Vampire Slayer_ on Disney+ and its transfer from film is
| woefully bad. For certain scenes, the picture quality
| looked like upscaled standard definition and these
| transitions were very jarring. Also, whatever filter they
| used for grain removal made the flesh tones and facial
| features look "wrong".
|
| Even worse was the wholly unnecessary conversion from 4:3
| to 16:9. The resulting composition of many scenes was
| distractingly bad. At one stage, they the second camera
| unit can be seen filming the action from the side!
|
| _Edit_ : Fortunately, Disney+ have made _The Simpsons_
| (another transfer from film) available in 4:3 - as well
| as the default 16:9. There's a setting in the UI to play
| it in 4:3.
| jefurii wrote:
| I don't know about _Buffy_ but some later Star Trek
| series like Deep Space 9 will be really hard to remaster
| because they were shot on video instead of film. The
| detail just isn 't there to be enhanced.
| fitzroy wrote:
| Deep Space 9 was also shot on film. The editing, effects,
| and mastering were completed on video (same for TNG).
| This is true for nearly every 1-hour US prime-time drama
| of that era (Buffy, X-Files, etc).
|
| https://www.slashfilm.com/549088/star-trek-voyager-deep-
| spac...
| reaperducer wrote:
| _Special effects, costumes and sets are all much more
| believable when you 're viewing them on a little grainy
| screen_
|
| Can confirm. I recently watched Ghostbusters on Blu-ray. Wow.
| The special effects are really obvious.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > The special effects are really obvious.
|
| I've never understood this complaint. Almost all special
| effects are obvious, because they depict things that aren't
| real. I don't remember watching Ghostbusters in the theater
| and wondering if those were really ghosts.
| na85 wrote:
| It's easier to suspend your disbelief when you can't see
| the little squares around the TIE Fighter as it attacks
| the Millennium Falcon.
| SenHeng wrote:
| Some people just cannot (or refuse to) recognise all the
| noise you can see around old/cheap/low quality effects. I
| often watched those silly Japanese horror varieties where
| they would show you a grainy video of some dark place,
| and then maybe a grainy shot of someone crawling out of
| something. But you know it's two separate things spliced
| together because the grains are of a different size, or
| when one area is gray-scale while another is simply
| decolourised to match. My friends could never tell the
| difference.
| joosters wrote:
| Older 'practical' special effects still hold up better than
| much more recent early CGI though. Even if you can tell
| that something is a physical model, IMO it still looks 100x
| better than a poorly rendered and animated low-poly 3d
| effect.
| na85 wrote:
| Even modern CG is garbage and suffers from the uncanny
| valley effect.
|
| I don't enjoy Marvel films but even if I did they're
| unwatchable because of the awful CG.
| tomc1985 wrote:
| The Blu-Ray release of Star Trek TNG suffers from this a ton
| -- it was great seeing one of my favorite childhood TV shows
| in high def but it made all of the costumes, makeup, and sets
| look so fake!
| dasil003 wrote:
| This is only strictly true if you're talking about
| television. The analog nature of film and its degradation
| along with the imperfection of human memory mean we can't
| really know for sure exactly how, for example, Lawrence of
| Arabia looked on the big screen in its contemporary
| transfers. But it was definitely better than anything seen on
| a television prior to at least 1080p if not 4k.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _The analog nature of film and its degradation along with
| the imperfection of human memory mean we can 't really know
| for sure exactly how, for example, Lawrence of Arabia
| looked on the big screen in its contemporary transfers._
|
| It depends on the source material.
|
| As luck would have it, I just recently got the 4K Blu-ray
| of Lawrence of Arabia, and it is very very grainy. Much
| more so than the 4K version of Rear Window, though that has
| a lot of noticeable grain.
|
| Fortunately, some theaters still occasionally show classics
| like these, so when Lawrence comes around, we should find
| out. Hopefully. Assuming it comes in on big reels of film,
| and not over a digital link.
| Anthony-G wrote:
| A couple of years ago, I was lucky to see _Lowrence of
| Arabia_ in a local cinema with a 70 mm film projector.
| The film was originally shot on 65mm and it looked
| fabulous on the big screen! I don't remember the film
| grain being an issue. I usually notice it at the start of
| the film but then quickly get used to it. It's also
| likely that the picture quality was cleaned to some
| degree.
|
| I presume your Blu-Ray transfer was processed
| conservatively. Digital filters to remove film grain can
| introduce their own artifacts which degrade the image
| quality and make the picture look different from how it
| was originally intended to be seen.
| gnopgnip wrote:
| I think the endgame will be like music licensing, with a max
| royalty set by the government with a short exclusivity period.
| This is why smaller companies like deezer and tidal can compete
| with Apple Music, YouTube music, Spotify and still have
| substantially all of the same music
| scarface_74 wrote:
| There is no government imposed royalty on "music" for on
| demand music.
|
| Sites like Pandora where you can't choose your playlist do
| come under mandatory licenses. But services where you can
| play any music on demand is individually negotiated with the
| rights holders. The reason competition is ubiquitous is that
| the music labels didn't want to be beholden to one company
| during the streaming era like they were with Apple during the
| iTunes era. Besides, they make all of the money from
| streaming (70%+) and leave the services with a pittance. It's
| a horrible business to be in as a standalone service.
|
| It only makes sense as an integrated offering. Spotify and
| every other stand alone service is going to always be stuck
| with the "Dropbox problem". A streaming service is a feature
| not a product.
|
| There are also government mandated max royalties for
| songwriters.
|
| When I was a part time fitness instructor, the only way you
| could get music from the original artist was by knowing some
| DJs who did it low-key who could mix music on the 32 count
| phrase with a consistent beats per minute (step/cardio
| kickboxing etc.). The more mainstream fitness music had to
| use cover versions of the music. It's easier to get a license
| on the music, song writing than the entire performance.
|
| You or the studio also had to have a separate performance
| license to play the music during class.
|
| I can go on and on forever and I yada yada yada'd over the
| details on purpose.
| sokoloff wrote:
| It all depends on how close you sit. If you're 12+ feet away,
| you may not be able to resolve the difference between 1080p and
| 4K, but at 6-8 feet away, I bet you can.
| omoikane wrote:
| For me it's not so much the difference in resolution, but the
| fact that due to low resolution being the norm, all the on-
| screen text tend to be huge. This is readily noticeable for
| the credit text in TV shows (not so much for movies, which
| seem to have barely legible credit text going way back).
| pessimizer wrote:
| People get trained on what's supposed to be nice. There are
| people who will insist that anything less that 2K
| resolution on their computer monitor _physically hurts
| their eyes and brain._
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Blur can cause eye strain, and eye strain hurts. I don't
| think that's a weird thing to say.
|
| Also "2K" is mess of a term people shouldn't use. By
| better definitions it should mean either almost-1080p or
| a loose term for 1080p. 1440p is often called 2K but it
| really isn't. 2560x1440 is 2.5K if anything.
| jinto36 wrote:
| One of the most noticeable things about playing laserdiscs on
| modern displays is the poor black levels and noise in shadows,
| and of course the difficulty in scaling interlaced material.
| Even with what should be a decent (but not nearly top of the
| line) FPGA-based deinterlacer/scaler I still feel like it
| should look better than it does, given how much better
| laserdisc resolution can be than VHS. But it's also analog
| video, and discs can degrade, as well as components in players
| going out-of-spec and increasing noise. I still like them, and
| there's something nice about large gatefold packaging, and
| these giant discs.
|
| Also got a hi-fi beta player recently and even though Beta is
| only 10 more lines than VHS at 250 (compared to 420 for LD and
| SVHS) it really did not look that bad on an LCD. It's also
| possible that the unit I received and the tape I tried it with
| have less wear than the average VHS VCR.
| [deleted]
| dylan604 wrote:
| i'm sure there's a device somewhere you can insert inline to
| convert the colorspace from 601 to 709 for SD->HD. or change
| the picture profile on your monitor to help compensate for
| the 7.5IRE SD black.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > I think we all forget though just how poor the quality was
| back then, and what we've become accustomed to, with VHS being
| 240 lines, DVD 480p, etc. It's like reminiscing about the first
| iPhone and then looking at one and realizing how damn small it
| actually was compared to modern versions.
|
| I think the "what we've become accustomed to" is the most
| important factor there. Back in the VHS/NTSC days, without
| experience of anything else, I had not complaints about the
| quality.
| laumars wrote:
| Really? I did.
|
| - Tapes would get chewed by the player
|
| - Took an age to find the right recording (you'd spend an age
| constantly rewinding)
|
| - Tapes would degrade the more you used them
|
| - sometimes they wouldn't even sync vertically with your TV.
| Requiring all sorts of fun and games tuning your hardware
|
| - audio was often muffled and sounded like it was played
| through a sock
|
| - if you shared a household there was always the risk that
| someone would tape over your favourite recording
|
| - and even just getting the same content recorded was a game
| of chance. If the TV network was early or late airing your
| show or movie, there was a good chance you'll end up missing
| some of it (back then there wasn't an EPG so you had to
| programmed the VCR to start at a specific time rather than
| the start of a specific show).
|
| Not to mention my younger brother kept jamming Lego into the
| VCR (but at least that's not the fault of the technology).
|
| I hated VHS. Switched to DVD the moment I could. Even though
| my computer wasn't powerful enough to playback DVD properly I
| still massively preferred it.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > Really? I did.
|
| I was talking about video quality, not that other stuff.
|
| > - if you shared a household there was always the risk
| that someone would tape over your favourite recording
|
| This is actually significantly worse now, since most
| households lack the ability to "tape" _anything_.
| SenHeng wrote:
| Back here in Asia, aka land of the pirates and DivX, we
| could quickly moved to CDs, CDRs and VCDs. I think the huge
| proliferation of VCDs in Asia stunted the spread of DVDs
| for quite some time because they were just so cheap.
|
| It was a hassle having to switching discs midway through a
| movie, but there were a few enterprising people who sold
| players that let you insert two discs!
| pessimizer wrote:
| > Laserdiscs (if anyone recalls)
|
| Just coincidentally, today I came across the the wikipedia
| entry for the last Laserdisc release:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokyo_Raiders in September 2001.
| papito wrote:
| If you want your mind blown - "Who really killed Blockbuster
| Video?"
|
| https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/who-really-killed-bloc...
|
| It's amazing that Blockbuster had Netflix on the ropes, until one
| notorious activist investor showed up and basically gave Netflix
| the win.
|
| One man is responsible for creating a completely different
| timeline when it comes to video streaming. Very similar to how we
| would be living in a different reality if GM's ahead-of-its-time
| EV1 was not mysteriously disappeared in the 90s.
| kerblang wrote:
| It's sort of bizarre that an entrenched, widely despised
| corporate behemoth thoroughly deserving its own demise has turned
| into an anachronistic mom-and-pop shop that just gets by. But
| isn't this the worst of both worlds? It's dystopian nostalgia.
| Maybe I just have too much of a grudge against the 1980's...
| rco8786 wrote:
| > widely despised
|
| Wait? It was? I grew up through the 90s and have nothing but
| fond memories of Blockbuster
| karaterobot wrote:
| Yeah, ironic because Blockbuster is what killed off the mom and
| pop stores it now stands in for in our collective memory of the
| 90s.
|
| I actually liked our local Blockbuster, and have fond memories
| of it, but only because it was run by the same employees from
| the independent video store it drove out of business. I liked
| that one even better.
| artificial wrote:
| This reminds me of smaller bookstores prior to the era of
| Borders and Barnes and Noble dominance. _pours one out_
| bluedino wrote:
| How are they still in business, by the way? It seemed like
| they were just a Starbucks location with a ton of overhead,
| I thought we'd seen the last of them when pandemic shut
| everything down.
|
| I loved B&N by the way, more computer-related books than
| WaldenBooks, but not as many as Borders.
| jabroni_salad wrote:
| Around the time of the pandemic they implemented a
| strategic change to have local management arrange the
| store rather than auctioning shelf placement to
| publishers like most other retailers do. This has
| actually made B&N pretty nice to browse compared to a few
| years ago.
| bombcar wrote:
| Because "Starbucks with overhead" is a surprisingly
| effective business model apparently; though if you go
| into one you'll notice that there are a lot more
| chotchkeys for sale near the front of the store (even
| LEGO lol).
| munificent wrote:
| _> How are they still in business, by the way?_
|
| They've broadened out into being general "gift stores".
| My local Barnes and Noble has a large toys section
| (mostly LEGO and educational stuff), board games,
| puzzles, music (lots of vinyl), stationery (fancy
| journals).
|
| It's essentially "stuff introverts like" in a nice space.
| legitster wrote:
| Smaller bookstores are actually doing pretty okay these
| days: https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2020/02/18/indie-
| bookstores-com...
|
| Mostly because Amazon decimated corporate chains, which
| freed up more market for independent stores.
| ghaff wrote:
| Though independents are still a pretty niche business.
| Around where I am there are certainly far fewer of them
| than there were before the big chains became dominant.
| legitster wrote:
| I don't know. I'm in a pretty redneck county and even
| here there are dozen independent bookstores.
|
| Most of them are tied to a coffeeshop though. But if you
| check your local map you might be surprised.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Even the article said there were 10-15 bookstores in a
| place that had 35 of them in the 70s.
| legitster wrote:
| > Blockbuster is what killed off the mom and pop stores
|
| Is there a source for this? Usually, both rise and fall
| together with consumer demand. When I grew up, Blockbuster
| was one of a dozen options in town.
|
| As an example, there are more independent coffee shops today
| than before Starbucks expanded.
| LegitShady wrote:
| the wikipedia article for blockbuster contains a
| quote/source about this (search it for "mom and pop") but
| the citation no longer exists due to link rot.
|
| essentially blockbuster operated at larger scales than many
| small video businesses and so had smaller unit costs while
| also having more selection.
| omar_alt wrote:
| I distinctively remember around 1994 two family run stores
| in the UK town I grew up in disappearing and the reason was
| the same, Blockbuster.
|
| I didn't play games much but I recall them also renting out
| Japanese nintendo games and also sold the necessary
| cartridge converters to play Starfox.
| ars wrote:
| > the reason was the same, Blockbuster.
|
| The "name" of the reason might be Blockbuster, but the
| actual reason was that Blockbuster had a larger
| selection. Those mom and pop stores were really small, so
| if you wanted something else you had to go to Blockbuster
| anyway, so why bother dealing with more than one store
| even for the stuff they had? Just get everything at
| Blockbuster.
|
| It's the same with retail stores - I don't go to the
| small stores, even if they might have what I want - why
| should I? I can go to the larger store and get everything
| and not have to think about it.
| bombcar wrote:
| Starbucks grew the "expensive coffee" market, and so
| independents had a niche to slip into (expensive, but not
| Starbucks) - Blockbuster did nothing to grow the "rental
| movie" market, and a given market in an area is roughly
| limited to the number of houses in said market.
|
| People drink less office/gas station coffee than they used
| to, and so can drink more Starbucks/independent coffee. The
| same didn't happen to the mom and pop video rental places
| (though the ones that survived blockbuster, usually by
| being in a market too small to support a Blockbuster, often
| outlived them (the one near me closed a few years ago
| finally)).
| acheron wrote:
| Yeah that's how I remember it too. In one town we lived in,
| we always got videos from the independent place. My main
| memory of Blockbuster is that one time my parents went
| there instead, and they gave us the wrong movie, which my
| sister and I were very disappointed by.
|
| In another town we lived in, the video rental place was a
| local chain with fewer than 10 locations, maybe just around
| 5. I don't remember if a Blockbuster even existed locally.
| causi wrote:
| I loved when Blockbuster came to town because it cut the
| price of rentals by two thirds. I was not a wealthy child and
| being able to rent a game every few weeks was way better than
| every couple of months.
| WalterBright wrote:
| The local video rental proprietor told me when she was
| closing up for good was that Netflix destroyed her business.
| mikeocool wrote:
| Anecdotally, I recall a brief moment in the late 2000's
| where the mom and pop shops had a bit of resurgence (or at
| least a stay on their execution) -- when Netflix DVD's by
| mail had put most Block Busters out of business, but before
| every movie was readily available on streaming services.
|
| If it was Friday night, and you'd just sent back your
| netflix disc -- or you were looking to watch something that
| wasn't at the top of your queue, the mom and pop video
| rental place was your only option. At least in NYC, it
| seemed like this kept those places going a little but
| longer than anyone would have guessed when Block Buster was
| still around.
|
| Though once streaming became prevalent they all disappeared
| pretty quickly.
| rhino369 wrote:
| NYC probably had more indie rental stores around just
| because of the population density. In my suburb,
| Blockbuster had already wiped them out in the 90's.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Feels like even without streaming or even Netflix's
| original DVD-by-mail delivery service, Redbox could've
| eaten brick and mortar movie rental stores.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| I don't recall Redbox existing, at least in my area,
| during that time.
| _fat_santa wrote:
| The way I see it, there are really two Blockbusters. One is an
| evil corporate behemoth, the other is the neighborhood video
| store that lives on in our memories. These guys aren't keeping
| Blockbuster running so much as they are keeping the nostalgic
| memory of it going.
|
| TBH I'm a bit surprised no one has tried to buy the Blockbuster
| brand from Dish and restart the company. I feel like you could
| effectively run one much like a comic book store, there's
| always a niche that will patronize the business.
| bombcar wrote:
| Double so since something like Redbox could have definitely
| used the brand.
| mxuribe wrote:
| They could have bought the Blockbuster brand, and combined
| it into a gawdy 80s style amalgamam of purple (you know,
| blue plus red)...and called it something like BoxBuster!
| And beyond dvd rentals, sell Roku devices. But, alas! ;-)
| causi wrote:
| I don't purchase movies anymore but I could see myself going
| to a store to rent a 4K blu-ray to get the commentary tracks.
| Those are hard to come by online.
| registeredcorn wrote:
| That's one of the things that kills me about present day
| distribution. There is such a massive hole in not getting
| to hear from the creators the way you could with DVDs.
| Shows like The Simpsons, etc. have offered a massive amount
| of information presented through commentary, that wouldn't
| otherwise be known.
| causi wrote:
| When I was a kid I'd watch Futurama on DVD with
| commentary and think "Wow I bet one day I'll be able to
| pause any movie and click on anything and get all the
| info about it." I can't believe we went the opposite
| direction.
| TylerE wrote:
| This is one thing Amazon does well. Pause almost anything
| and it will show you the actors presently on screen (with
| headshots, which you can click on to get more info.
|
| They'll also name the song playing, if any.
| causi wrote:
| Eh, that's not really anything you couldn't do with
| google almost as easily. I mean _real_ multimedia. I want
| to pause Lord of the Rings, click on a sword, and get the
| passage where the sword is described in the book. I want
| to click on a character and get a behind-the-scenes look
| at the making of the costume. I want it all.
| TylerE wrote:
| Googling opens you up to spoilers.
| pessimizer wrote:
| That sounds like a bunch of work for very little return,
| not any new technology.
| gpspake wrote:
| I guess the other side of that coin is I feel like we
| have more access to creators than ever with youtube and
| podcasts. If I want to "meet my heroes" so to speak, I
| don't need DVD extras, I can just watch them in all sorts
| of formats online. Pre internet, you couldn't really
| watch Scorcese on hot ones.
| Dig1t wrote:
| I grew up in the 90's and have nothing but warm fuzzy memories
| of renting a movie on Friday night and watching in the living
| room with my family, eating popcorn and candy.
|
| I think there's probably a lot of people who have that from
| their childhood.
| altdataseller wrote:
| Same, Growing up in the US, I also have warm memories of
| TGIF, where we'd watch Family Matters together as a family on
| Friday night.
| solardev wrote:
| Wait, did TGIF go away too?! :(
|
| Lol, I grew up overseas and TGIF was where we'd go to
| celebrate "American style" as a family, like on the 4th of
| July or whatever. First time I ever had potato skins.
| Didn't even know that was considered an edible food source
| until that day. Blew my mind as a kid.
| fetus8 wrote:
| Poster above you is talking about a block of TV
| programming called TGIF as well.
|
| The fast casual restaurant chain still exists, and is
| definitely still cartoonishly embellished with Americana,
| and surprisingly decent food for what it is.
| solardev wrote:
| Ahhh, thanks for the clarification. I'm glad the
| restaurant is still around.
| curlftpfs wrote:
| Still, not once has the United Nations passed a
| resolution to fund the building of TGI Fridays franchises
| in South Asia or sub-Saharan Africa, where nearly
| everyone lacks access to warm, inviting restaurants with
| vibrant Americana-themed decor [1]
| https://www.theonion.com/tgi-fridays-is-a-human-
| right-182535...
| solardev wrote:
| Lol! They jest, but TGIF was literally my main reference
| for "America" before I visited for the first time. They
| do a better job propagandizing than VoA for sure.
| corrral wrote:
| That part was great. Getting charged late fees because you
| didn't have it back at 8:00AM sharp (or whatever) sucked.
| hinkley wrote:
| They also had quite a markup on those snacks. Not movie
| theater levels, but a lot higher than the convenience
| store.
| nend wrote:
| I don't really view that as evil though, just basic
| market dynamics.
|
| Similarly, CVS sells cheerios for $7 a box. I don't think
| CVS is evil, sometimes I'm just lazy.
| hinkley wrote:
| Convenience stores also generally have a markup versus
| grocery stores. That they had a markup above that was
| always a bit questionable. My recollection is that over
| time they switched to some more niche candies, things you
| couldn't necessarily find down the street and so the
| apples-to-oranges problem gave them a bit of an excuse.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| Parent is referencing how Blockbuster put all the local video
| stores out of business, like Walmart and Main Street America.
|
| It happened with record stores, too, via Tower Records and
| other national chains I can't remember now
| JackFr wrote:
| Good record stores outlasted Tower Records. What failed
| were record stores which were basically Tower records, only
| watered down weaker versions.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Good bookstores didn't outlast Borders/Barnes &
| Noble/Books-a-Million etc. (or at least 90% of them
| didn't.) It was really annoying when people were mourning
| the destruction of 15 year old book warehouses by Amazon,
| when I was still mourning 100 year old bookstores.
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| I did as well. While helping set up my parents (now Grandma
| and Grandpa) on our Disney+ and Netflix plans, we discussed
| the demise of Blockbuster.
|
| As it turns out, they did a really good job of insulating us
| as kids from the backup plans for broken VHS tapes, late
| fees, mis-boxed movies, returns that were accepted but never
| registered, out-of-stock hit movies, and other 'adult'
| problems. Their memories of movie nights did not have quite
| the same golden hue, but they were happy that they'd fostered
| that kind of memory in spite of the stresses of parenting.
| js2 wrote:
| On the other side of the counter, my wife (girlfriend at the
| time) worked at BB in HS. Even by minimum wage, teen job,
| retail standards it was awful. She loathed it. I'll bet if I
| even just say the word "blockbuster" to her three decades
| later she'll give me a stink eye.
| mikkergp wrote:
| Since I'm obsessed with the recent 80's
| resurgence(acknowledging that this reflection of the 1980's is
| much more polished than the original) I'm curious, what's your
| grudge against the 1980's?
| rubyn00bie wrote:
| Yeah I personally hated blockbuster because they sent me to
| collections over like $9 in late fees I didn't know I had.
| People have fond memories but I have nearly none of video
| rentals. Long lines, poor selection, and over priced... along
| with bullshit "late fees," I can say I am happy they failed.
| Truly video rental stores were not great, and I dunno why
| people remember them like they were.
| throwaway675309 wrote:
| A lot of the people who have fond recollections of video
| rental stores are because they were kids at the time, going
| to the video store was associated with Friday nights and
| family movie time for a lot of kids.
|
| I'm sure their parents who were responsible for rewinding the
| tapes, late fees, etc. remember the video stores less fondly.
| ghaff wrote:
| Mostly rose-colored glasses nostalgia probably. Being able to
| rent a movie whenever[0] you wanted to and watch it at home
| was extremely transformative in a way that someone who grew
| up with streaming (not you I realize) would find difficult to
| appreciate. A lot of movies weren't even purchasable as a
| practical matter (priced to rent) at the time.
|
| [0] Well, if they had it and it was in stock.
| bombcar wrote:
| They'd even rent VCRs and DVD players, which was a big deal
| early on when they were multiple hundreds of dollars.
| amyjess wrote:
| They'd rent video game consoles too.
|
| Speaking of which, I miss video game rentals. I spent so
| much time as akid at Blockbuster looking for games to
| rent. Even now, I'd like to be able to play with a game
| for a few days before committing to paying for the whole
| game.
|
| (and of course, I say this with a hundred unplayed games
| in my Steam library...)
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| Before video rental stores, we rented a film projector at
| the public library and movies on reel-to-reel film. Small
| selection of old stuff like Marx Brothers, Three Stooges,
| etc.
| thewebcount wrote:
| Yeah, likewise. What I'm noticing in the comments is people
| who say, "My parents would take me there on Fridays..." seem
| to be nostalgic for it, but for those of us who were adults,
| we ran into the things you talk about.
|
| I distinctly remember 2 specific problems: 1) Being unable to
| get the latest release you wanted to watch. This was a big
| problem when video stores (not just Blockbuster) would only
| get in a few copies of new movies. Eventually Blockbuster got
| some sort of deal with the studios where they would get in
| something like 100 copies of the latest releases and the
| problem became #2:
|
| 2) Being unable to find anything but the most popular movies.
| If you wanted to watch that slightly less popular artsy film
| (but not anything as obscure as a foreign film, just not a
| (lowercase "b") blockbuster movie), they'd only have a few
| copies of it, and they'd inevitably all be rented out
| whenever you wanted to watch it.
|
| I just remember going around the entire store and saying,
| "seen it, seen it, seen it, don't want to see it, seen it,"
| etc.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Also they didn't stock gory horror, 99.9% of foreign films,
| classics, or porn. If Blockbusters shut down your local
| video store, you just weren't going to be able to watch a
| wide variety of movies anymore (until Netflix's DVDs by
| mail came along.)
| overthemoon wrote:
| It is weird. I think it's a stand-in for nostalgia for lost
| media formats and the experience they engendered. I have a lot
| of fuzzy feelings about it, because it was an event on Friday
| when my parents would take us there, or my dad would stop by
| after work and get movies or video games. I would just about
| shit myself when he finally got a copy of Super Mario All-Stars
| or Earthbound. When I was a little older it was close enough
| that I could ride my bike there.
|
| But for me, it's not really about Blockbuster. It's about the
| format of home video. All the ritual, the excitement
| surrounding a new release that everyone wanted, sitting down to
| watch it together. It's about the object of video, the thing
| you can hold, and is similar to why I like to collect vinyl. I
| like the artifact in and of itself, along with what's encoded
| on it.
| atlgator wrote:
| I worked at a corporate Blockbuster for just over a year during
| high school. I made $7.15/hr and I commuted using my bicycle.
| Best job I ever had.
| ranieuwe wrote:
| Welp at least he doesn't have any scaling issues. Scaled down to
| the minimal set.
| cmckn wrote:
| I was in Bend a few months ago and swung by the last Blockbuster.
| I rented a movie (and bought a t-shirt), and had to sign up for
| an account. I received a laminated paper Blockbuster card with an
| account number scrawled in Sharpie on the back. I wouldn't have
| guessed that the store was still calling out to these old
| servers; that's pretty cool.
|
| The movie cost 99 cents to rent, which I thought was surprisingly
| cheap. The clerks were talking about how people come in to take
| pictures (no surprise there) and were usually inconsiderate about
| including the clerks in photos.
|
| It smelled exactly the same in there. It was neat.
| tantalor wrote:
| > inconsiderate about including the clerks
|
| As in, rudely excluded the clerks, or rudely included? Either
| way makes sense me to me.
| dannyisaphantom wrote:
| That's so cool and sounds like an awesome experience. I keep my
| Mom's original Blockbuster laminated card in the back of my
| iPhone case :) Just checked the print date and its from
| 9/24/04. Great piece of nostalgia.
| tomjakubowski wrote:
| Small world: 9/24/04 was the date on my first driver's
| license
| davidw wrote:
| I live a few blocks from that place. It's kind of weird all the
| attention it gets.
| tremarley wrote:
| Stan Marsh
| bloomingeek wrote:
| Don't know if it's been mentioned or not, but what killed the
| video store for me was the late fees. Hollywood Video had a
| parking lot drop box that was good up until midnight. I worked
| the overnight shift so I would drop the seen vids at 9:15pm and
| then drive off to work. Almost every time they would charge me a
| late fee! When I would call them on the fee, they always dropped
| it, making me wonder about the other people who wouldn't protest.
|
| Also, many times I witnessed exasperated parents and grandparents
| paying a huge late fee because their kids forgot to drop them
| off.
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