Movie rental stores...Do you miss them?

[Hubunkey]

I don't have to miss it because I have a family video in town. I like redbox for new releases but honestly I rent very little in fact I watch very few movies period anymore. I am binging Criminal Minds at the moment and still have 4 seasons left of it to get caught up. I stopped collecting movies and decided to focus on family

[AmrlKJaneway]

Definitely miss them, and the library as well. In the VHS days, they were so huge! My local had a playground in the back, because the kids could easily get bored whilst their parents browsed through the mazes and corridors of movie shelves. Remember the sci-fi section and then the Star Trek section, because there was only two episodes of Star Trek on a tape, and the whole thing filled up a shelf.

Oh! And my local had a projector and screen set up, playing the latest releases. It was amazing! Who had a projector then!? Right now I'm aimlessly browsing the internet and typing stupid nostalgic crap like this on a projector...

And remember that movie you rented over and over and over again. In the long run, you could have bought it ten times over. But that didn't seem like something you had to do back then. Like that game at the arcade you pumped coin after coin into.

Oh! And remember renting video games! On cartridges! And someone else's save game was on there. Imagine renting an overnight game now and spending half the night installing the day 1 patch. That would be worth the $6.

So yeah. We're missing something these days. With the arcade, cinema, library and rental movie store gone. Going out for your entertainment and all that. Oh! And slot car shops! Oh well... at least we have social networking and the internet in our pockets nowadays (Oh! And internet cafes, because no one was connected at home)...

*throws up*

edit: Oh! And remember the comic book shop?

[Samus Aran]

There are still lots of comic book shops. Not as many as there used to be, plus they've had to expand to all sorts of additional memorabilia.

[darkness2918]

I miss the experience of browsing through them with my dad as a kid more then I miss the stores themselves. I have great memories of just looking around for something new to watch (mainly horror).

[blurayfriend]

We got Redbox now, so I think that's even better. But I don't understand people thinking Netflix (streaming) is somehow a suitable replacement- they don't get any new movies, ever, so you're stuck watching episodes of Ultimate Spider-Man and the Ridiculous 6 than anything released in the last year if you go that way.

[Sakhalin]

I miss them. I loved staring at the VHS covers. When I was a little girl I always went to the Horror section and stared at the boxes for Jack Frost or Alien or some slasher flick, and adults always gave me weird looks.

And Video Update had like 99c rental on Tuesdays! My dad always took me there after school. It was awesome.

[harpolini]

Originally Posted by rodneyfaile

There's a few people in another thread who have said they order movies online because they don't want to put pants on, and now I see people don't want to rent movies from a video store because they would have to put pants on. Is it time for a "do you miss pants" thread?

Paul Anka and Lisa Simpson - Just don't look - YouTube

[supersix4]

Originally Posted by darkness2918

I miss the experience of browsing through them with my dad as a kid more then I miss the stores themselves. I have great memories of just looking around for something new to watch (mainly horror).

Yeah thats about it... But when you live in a massive city and if anyone remembers what fridays were like with lines to the back of the store I'll pass on that lol

[Blu-rob77]

I do miss it, I use to have a monthly pass with no limit. Every employee knew me there by my first name lol.

[Leslie Dame]

I miss rental stores in VHS days:

- At some places they had paper and pencils at the counter so you could write down the number on the box of the tape you wanted to rent.
- I loved the weekend specials, like rent six and pay for five.
- renting movies around Halloween, employees would put Halloween candy in your bag of rentals.
- whenever I came in on a cold winter day employees would make me sit near the heater to warm up, and give me a cup of tea or coffee.

It's those little things I miss the most.

[Packerfan75]

I miss it. I always enjoyed going to the movie store and browsing the selection. Sometimes I'd find something new, make friends with the people working there, or strike up a conversation with someone about movies. It was an experience that's never been replaced. Also, I never blind bought anything before rental stores went away which hasn't worked out well for me at all since.
I've always thought that if I ever came into some real money, I'd start up my own rental store just to get back some of that personal interaction and hands on rental experience that's missing today.

[doctor_who]

Family Video is still booming, isn't it? Blockbuster was great, but they didn't have a good enough Blu Ray section. I don't miss it anymore, and in fact got tons of 99 cent Blu Rays in their sell off!

[Todd Tomorrow]

I used to go to rental stores in the VHS days, but I've been renting movies online since the early days of DVD because it works out far cheaper than rental stores and there is more choice. As I don't miss VHS, I don't miss rental stores much.

[FrellingFrakker]

I don't miss the late fees but I do miss the experience. I loved browsing the aisles and finding unknown gems I'd never heard of. I miss going through the used sale bins of VHS/dvds and video games. I'm pretty sure half my SNES collection as a kid came from the Blockbuster used bin. As with other types of retail that are dying, I miss buying physical items in a physical location with real human beings around me.

[Phibes]

http://www.cnn.com/2016/03/25/entert...ar-late-video/

This guy don't.

I do.

Nice to browse and even talk about movies.

Try and find a Jack Lemmon movie on Netflix, not even a placeholder

[KRW1]

I miss the social aspect of it more than anything and what I miss now is recommending a film to someone and not really being able to suggest a way they can watch it if they don't have Netflix or a bluray player (so I can lend them a copy). They invariably end up by saying "I'll have a look for it online" so you're hardly helping the industry!

[harpolini]

Originally Posted by Phibes

Try and find a Jack Lemmon movie on Netflix, not even a placeholder

Right! For awhile they had The China Syndrome on Netflix, but sometimes their "library" seem vastly small. Then, when they do have movies by an actor it's a bunch of their lesser works.

HBOGo seems to push alot of quality movies to stream, but a very small selection. Hulu win's brownie points for their Criterion and Cohen Media Group collections.

I would love the option for a genre/actor/director pass from iTunes or Vudu. Pay $10 or $15 and have access to an entire genre or director's work.

[dissention]

Blockbuster was the worst (even Hollywood Video was better than that hellhole), but I absolutely miss the mom & pop video stores. Nothing beats spending time browsing shelves or talking about movies with the employees & other customers. As someone above me said, it's the social aspect that I miss the most. And the Slush Puppies, penny candy & garish displays and posters sent by the studios.

Streaming is the enemy of good films. It's cheaper to populate your service with DTV dreck, so it overpowers anything else.

[mrr1]

I don't miss them.

I couldn't begin t count the number of times I got frustrated because the movie I wanted to rent was out of stock, or when I finally got the movie home it wouldn't play because the tape or DVD was wrecked by some other careless customer.

Today I have access to a wider and better selection of movies than ever before, and for cheaper.

[mrr1]

One thing I do miss is when I couldn't decide what movie to rent, I would just let my 2 year old run through the store and pick something interesting.

She was only 2 and had no concept of WTF she was doing, so she would always come back to me holding a case for the weirdest movie from some bottom shelf somewhere in the store that I never saw before.