Are DVDs the real killer of video rental stores?

[wildojinx]

The deaths of most video rental places are usually blamed on streaming sites like Netflix, etc, and while thats true, does anyone think that DVD might also have been a factor? Most videos started out way above the price of the average viewer, and even when they did move to sell-through, it was still kind of expensive, making renting the video a cheaper alternative. Compare that to DVD, while the early discs were expensive, they eventually became more affordable, and they had special features which gave more options for repeat viewing, no to mention the tv on dvd market. Most people would rather pay the $20 (or less) and pick up the dvd and watch it at their convenience, rather than be forced to watch it in an allotted amount of time (or have to pay late fees).

[Deleted]

No, people were still renting DVDs. It simply comes down to the fact of why are going to go through the hassle of renting a movie, making sure you return it on time, them possibly not having the movie you want, etc. when you can just watch it without leaving your house for less money.

[Pooh Carlson]

Redbox was the death of video rental stores.

[Fade is a CodyCryBaby]

Redbox, Netflix, internet. Ironically, Netflix (or Redbox?..) tried to make a deal with Blockbuster way back when, only to be rejected.

Damn do I miss Blockbuster (And Hollywood Video to a lesser extent) It just felt special. And was fun to browse around. Some cheap video stores still exist depending on Location.

[Chainsaw]

They seemed to adapt well to DVD. The best part for them was that they could then sell DVDs used for a tidy profit when they had extra stock. The move to digital and kiosk rental def. helped to kill them off, but the fact that Blockbuster was a bloated bad idea factory, killing off the mom and pop stores only to succumb to new tech that they couldn't keep up with, that did them in.

[Nickybojelais]

I prefer to imagine that video rental stores died as a result of a worldwide protest against Russo.

[Deleted]

Jan 4, 2017 20:40:30 GMT -5 Chainsaw said:

They seemed to adapt well to DVD. The best part for them was that they could then sell DVDs used for a tidy profit when they had extra stock. The move to digital and kiosk rental def. helped to kill them off, but the fact that Blockbuster was a bloated bad idea factory, killing off the mom and pop stores only to succumb to new tech that they couldn't keep up with, that did them in.

It was the switch to DVD that killed off a lot of video stores, I worked for a place in 2003 that just couldn't keep up with demand, sure we could afford the new releases, but our entire store of VHS tapes became more obsolete by the day. Old back catalog titles even for stuff like Showgirls still was like $10 or so.

[RadcapRadsley]

80% of rentals though were usually stuff released in the last year so I doubt the back catalog suddenly losing value was a big hit.

[xCompackx]

Redbox and Netflix are likely bigger contributors to the decline in traditional video rental stores than the switch to DVD. I actually have a Redbox right next door to a video rental store and it's really tough to beat $1.12 or whatever it is now at Redbox as compared to the $3.00 for a DVD rental (with Blu-Ray being closer to $4.00). Or hell, paying for Netflix's mail service and getting unlimited movies for a set monthly rate.

And of course, torrenting and streaming probably cuts pretty deep there too.

[Juice]

Jan 4, 2017 20:10:53 GMT -5 Pooh Carlson said:

Redbox was the death of video rental stores.

Not is small towns. I have a mom and pop video store. So mom and poppy that their distributor had to stop sending promo stuff for free. So the last movie poster they put up to advertise is PAN. Who still not only outsells redbox in town but destroyed the blockbuster box in town.

Every town that surrounds me also still has video stores. Some of it is geographical.

[Joe Neglia]

Having worked for Hollywood Video, Blockbuster and 7.5 years as one of the last Dallas-area independents, my thoughts:

DVDs didn't help in ways, but they helped in other ways.

What started killing the video stores was a number of things, first and foremost the stores themselves. Most of Blockbusters major competitors were dead before streaming or Redbox were really going. Two of its largest, Movie Gallery and Hollywood Video, did themselves in. Hollywood was almost $400 million in debt when Movie Gallery bought them for $900 million. MG, which had found success catering to small towns, was taken down with the sinking Hollywood ship that there simply wasn't a way to fix.

Blockbuster COULD have survived had they done several things:

1. NOT spend the crucial 2000s constantly changing and revamping their strategies. Remember when half of every store was turned into CD racks, posters and entire aisles of magazines and candy? How about the year they focused huge parts of the stores on a satellite dish partnership, or the year they did the same with the giant Radio Shack kiosks in their stores? Instead of buckling down and focusing on their core business, they opted to throw shit at the wall, and none of it stuck.

2. They had the opportunity to buy Netflix early on, and passed.

3. Their hilariously short-lived BlueBox was too little against RedBox, too late.

Redbox and Netflix certainly dealt Blockbuster the killing blow, but they were already admitted into the hospital with life support a sure eventuality long before the two came into the picture.

Now, where does this leave DVDs? I helped run Starlight Video in Dallas from 2001 until we closed in December 2007. DVDs helped and hurt us - they helped because now we could stock a much wider range of titles without a rise in costs. We sold more DVDs too. The days of customers dropping $100 for a VHS tape because most of them weren't available in retail stores had mostly gone out by the end of the 1980s, so while the golden heyday was over, it wasn't due to DVD. My boss would regale me with stories of how in the mid-80s, he could sell down a tower of hundreds of copies of things like Making of Thriller and the Jane Fonda workout in a day or two. That wasn't happening to much by the 90s. People had just stopped buying them at that cost because they knew it would show up for retail at a better cost half a year or so later (and the big movies, the ones everyone wanted, were hitting retail at good prices immediately - Titanic, T2, Jurassic Park, etc) . We did okay even in the end - we shut the doors not owing a dime. In fact, the two things that finally took our store down were 1. Ungodly building rent increases and 2. The owner suffering a stroke in the summer of 2007. Between the two, and with Redbox and Netflix both starting to gain some actual traction at the same time, we saw the writing on the wall and decided to call it a day.

[Cranjis McBasketball]

Killed it for me. Renting a DVD was always a gamble, was it scratched to shit? Dirty as hell? Would it just skip like they sometimes do even if perfectly clean?

Places had no back catalogues to speak of, at least around here.

Once you couldn't actually rent a VHS anymore, I kind of lost interest in renting movies all together.

Same as games when they went all disc.

[Sponsored by Groose Wipes]

Redbox and digital downloads legal and/or not is what killed video stores. Why drive to rent and deal with membership when you can just do it at home? Convenience and convergence.

[trust]

Jan 4, 2017 23:28:01 GMT -5 Joe Neglia said:

Having worked for Hollywood Video, Blockbuster and 7.5 years as one of the last Dallas-area independents, my thoughts:

DVDs didn't help in ways, but they helped in other ways.

What started killing the video stores was a number of things, first and foremost the stores themselves. Most of Blockbusters major competitors were dead before streaming or Redbox were really going. Two of its largest, Movie Gallery and Hollywood Video, did themselves in. Hollywood was almost $400 million in debt when Movie Gallery bought them for $900 million. MG, which had found success catering to small towns, was taken down with the sinking Hollywood ship that there simply wasn't a way to fix.

Blockbuster COULD have survived had they done several things:

1. NOT spend the crucial 2000s constantly changing and revamping their strategies. Remember when half of every store was turned into CD racks, posters and entire aisles of magazines and candy? How about the year they focused huge parts of the stores on a satellite dish partnership, or the year they did the same with the giant Radio Shack kiosks in their stores? Instead of buckling down and focusing on their core business, they opted to throw shit at the wall, and none of it stuck.

2. They had the opportunity to buy Netflix early on, and passed.

3. Their hilariously short-lived BlueBox was too little against RedBox, too late.

Redbox and Netflix certainly dealt Blockbuster the killing blow, but they were already admitted into the hospital with life support a sure eventuality long before the two came into the picture.

Now, where does this leave DVDs? I helped run Starlight Video in Dallas from 2001 until we closed in December 2007. DVDs helped and hurt us - they helped because now we could stock a much wider range of titles without a rise in costs. We sold more DVDs too. The days of customers dropping $100 for a VHS tape because most of them weren't available in retail stores had mostly gone out by the end of the 1980s, so while the golden heyday was over, it wasn't due to DVD. My boss would regale me with stories of how in the mid-80s, he could sell down a tower of hundreds of copies of things like Making of Thriller and the Jane Fonda workout in a day or two. That wasn't happening to much by the 90s. People had just stopped buying them at that cost because they knew it would show up for retail at a better cost half a year or so later (and the big movies, the ones everyone wanted, were hitting retail at good prices immediately - Titanic, T2, Jurassic Park, etc) . We did okay even in the end - we shut the doors not owing a dime. In fact, the two things that finally took our store down were 1. Ungodly building rent increases and 2. The owner suffering a stroke in the summer of 2007. Between the two, and with Redbox and Netflix both starting to gain some actual traction at the same time, we saw the writing on the wall and decided to call it a day.

That is interesting, but I have a question. Did video games make a big impact on sales? I used to rent games all the time, mostly because $3.99 for 3 days is a lot cheaper than $50.  

[Nickybojelais]

Jan 5, 2017 0:34:58 GMT -5 trust said:

Jan 4, 2017 23:28:01 GMT -5 Joe Neglia said:

Having worked for Hollywood Video, Blockbuster and 7.5 years as one of the last Dallas-area independents, my thoughts:

DVDs didn't help in ways, but they helped in other ways.

What started killing the video stores was a number of things, first and foremost the stores themselves. Most of Blockbusters major competitors were dead before streaming or Redbox were really going. Two of its largest, Movie Gallery and Hollywood Video, did themselves in. Hollywood was almost $400 million in debt when Movie Gallery bought them for $900 million. MG, which had found success catering to small towns, was taken down with the sinking Hollywood ship that there simply wasn't a way to fix.

Blockbuster COULD have survived had they done several things:

1. NOT spend the crucial 2000s constantly changing and revamping their strategies. Remember when half of every store was turned into CD racks, posters and entire aisles of magazines and candy? How about the year they focused huge parts of the stores on a satellite dish partnership, or the year they did the same with the giant Radio Shack kiosks in their stores? Instead of buckling down and focusing on their core business, they opted to throw shit at the wall, and none of it stuck.

2. They had the opportunity to buy Netflix early on, and passed.

3. Their hilariously short-lived BlueBox was too little against RedBox, too late.

Redbox and Netflix certainly dealt Blockbuster the killing blow, but they were already admitted into the hospital with life support a sure eventuality long before the two came into the picture.

Now, where does this leave DVDs? I helped run Starlight Video in Dallas from 2001 until we closed in December 2007. DVDs helped and hurt us - they helped because now we could stock a much wider range of titles without a rise in costs. We sold more DVDs too. The days of customers dropping $100 for a VHS tape because most of them weren't available in retail stores had mostly gone out by the end of the 1980s, so while the golden heyday was over, it wasn't due to DVD. My boss would regale me with stories of how in the mid-80s, he could sell down a tower of hundreds of copies of things like Making of Thriller and the Jane Fonda workout in a day or two. That wasn't happening to much by the 90s. People had just stopped buying them at that cost because they knew it would show up for retail at a better cost half a year or so later (and the big movies, the ones everyone wanted, were hitting retail at good prices immediately - Titanic, T2, Jurassic Park, etc) . We did okay even in the end - we shut the doors not owing a dime. In fact, the two things that finally took our store down were 1. Ungodly building rent increases and 2. The owner suffering a stroke in the summer of 2007. Between the two, and with Redbox and Netflix both starting to gain some actual traction at the same time, we saw the writing on the wall and decided to call it a day.

That is interesting, but I have a question. Did video games make a big impact on sales? I used to rent games all the time, mostly because $3.99 for 3 days is a lot cheaper than $50.  

On that subject, The Gaming Historian made a very interesting video on how Nintendo reacted to video game rentals in the 90s.

link

[riseofsetian1981]

Jan 4, 2017 19:54:12 GMT -5 @therealoblivion said:

No, people were still renting DVDs. It simply comes down to the fact of why are going to go through the hassle of renting a movie, making sure you return it on time, them possibly not having the movie you want, etc. when you can just watch it without leaving your house for less money.

This.

I will say that I do miss the video store. Just the image of walking into the video store, seeing the collection of films and video games, talking to the employees about a particular film or game, and sometimes just the possibility of running into a friend or making one in the process made the going there exciting in my opinion.


It's a shame that streaming, Netflix, and other forms of technology essentially just made people more complacent and kept them inside rather than them going out to find what they want.

[Beets by Schrute]

I wonder if businesses like Amazon played a factor in video store demise as well. I remember Blockbuster and Hastings being the places where you could find the lesser known titles that the big stores like Best Buy and WalMart did not carry. Along comes Amazon saying they will save the hassle of searching store to store for lesser known movies and have it delivered to you in stated length of time.
I ask this as someone who used to go store to store looking for Elvis movies but could not find them all in one place, but can now get ahold of them on Amazon or Ebay.

[riseofsetian1981]

Jan 5, 2017 1:57:52 GMT -5 Beets by Schrute said:

I wonder if businesses like Amazon played a factor in video store demise as well. I remember Blockbuster and Hastings being the places where you could find the lesser known titles that the big stores like Best Buy and WalMart did not carry. Along comes Amazon saying they will save the hassle of searching store to store for lesser known movies and have it delivered to you in stated length of time.
I ask this as someone who used to go store to store looking for Elvis movies but could not find them all in one place, but can now get ahold of them on Amazon or Ebay.

Being able to rent/shop online overall hurt the video stores too. I do remember video stores at times only surviving because of them having porn to rent too. One video store in particular that I frequented on a daily basis bought out a rival video rental business, added more films to his store, and added a porn room. The owner said that porn brought him more business than the video games or the films that he had for rent.

[Chuck Conry]

I find it funny how the format of DVD is still hanging in there. We actually have some semi-big movies these days hitting DVD and not Blu-ray (most notably from Sony). I think in some cases companies are like "Well, we have it on Netflix and Vudu in HD so just toss a DVD out there if any of these nerds want to actually own something."

[Jiren]

I miss going to a video shop, Browsing the horror section and renting terrible horror movies and talking to people there about movies.