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girth brooks part 2 posted:I used to go to a little mom and pop shop called Audio/Video Plus until a few years ago when I moved, and it was just to far away. Sadly I just looked them up and they closed down for good a couple of months ago. Which is kind of tragic because they'd been open for decades and had drat near every thing since they never got rid of back stock. Like if I went in there and asked to rent a copy of The Crazies, they'd ask if I wanted it on DVD, VHS, or Betamax, that's how awesome this place was. If it's the same one in H-Town, I first visited this place a little over a year ago and it was like stepping into a timewarp. Checkerboard floors and neon clocks, a VHS copy of nearly every movie I've ever heard of, an entire room dedicated to laserdiscs, and an original lifesize cardboard standee of Schwarzenegger from "Commando" greeting the patrons at the entrance. There was a trailer reel with trailers from the 60's-80's playing on the old crt monitors hanging from the ceiling. I asked the owner if they had an obscure as hell kids flick from the 80's, and she pulled out this gargantuan book which contained everything in their catalog. Sure enough, they had it in Betamax (she told me they had something around 2000 beta tapes). The store had opened in the late 70's and she had been keeping the store going after her husband had passed away a few years ago. I was really sorry to see it go.
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Oct 11, 2014 09:26
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The early-to-mid-aughts was hard times because VHS was dying out with a lot of (by film dork standards) relatively in-demand stuff still not having made it to DVD. So thanks, Discount Video in Minneapolis for being the only place in the Upper Midwest with copies of like, fuckin', Coonskin and Light Years. 
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Oct 11, 2014 14:22
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The Time Dissolver posted:The early-to-mid-aughts was hard times because VHS was dying out with a lot of (by film dork standards) relatively in-demand stuff still not having made it to DVD. So thanks, Discount Video in Minneapolis for being the only place in the Upper Midwest with copies of like, fuckin', Coonskin and Light Years. Actually, the Hollywood Video in Minneapolis had a VHS copy of Street Fight (the rerelease title of Coonskin) since the Uptown location had way more VHS tapes than any other location I've been to. But, yeah, 2004-2006 was an excellent time for collecting VHS tapes. The last VHS was printed in 2005 which lead to all the big chain stores selling off their entire VHS library in droves. The Hollywood Video I mentioned was the best for selling all their VHS titles at $.50 per ($.25 if you bought a certain number). I also saw many massive collections dumped at places like Cheapo which included the complete first season of Star Trek and The X-Files.
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Oct 12, 2014 05:49
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Gonz posted:I haven't been to a video store since all the Hollywood Video and Blockbuster stores went out of business years ago and started selling off everything inside their buildings, which seems like ages ago. But today, out of curiosity, I did Google the area to see if there were any family run businesses still in operation, and lo and behold, I found Video Paradise, right outside of Phoenix. I practically grew up in this store, as impressive as it is it is but a shadow of 1993 video paradise. At one point they had 3 similarly sized locations around the valley and when then consolidated to just the Chandler store around 96-97 most of the VHS inventory went up for sale and the crazy out of print stuff to be had for cheap was amazing. Sadly as the 90's and first years of the 2000's hit the porn section showed it was the area generating the most profit and gradually expanded taking more and more floor space. I'll say it again, yes it is large but in the days before dvd video paradise was one of the best collections of every obscure VHS ever printed. I live a few miles down the road again, I should get a new membership and rent a Blu Ray from time to time.
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Oct 14, 2014 10:57
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Gorman Thomas posted:I went to the video store today. Picked up Night of the Hunter and Texas Chainsaw from Video Store Named Desire. Smelled like the 70s in there. Which is pretty interesting considering that a video store in the 70s was a very rare thing.
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Oct 14, 2014 14:55
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All you guys waxing nostalgic had a very different experience than I ever did. I loving hated going to the video store. Big chain or local, didn't matter, they never ever had what I wanted to see, or my second choice, or my third. Never enough copies of anything, cost almost as much as going to the real movies, I ended up just re-renting Die Hard every loving time I went there. In 2003 I signed up for Netflix and never looked back. The number of movies I've wanted to watch that they didn't have, I can count on one hand. Their catalog is better than any video store I've ever been to. Just last night a friend had a redbox movie due and asked me to swing by McDonald's so he could drop it off. The machine wouldn't accept the movie for some reason, so we had to drive around until we found a Walgreen's, which did accept it. Thank god for Netflix. Even that minor hassle reminded me of how much I hated video stores.
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Oct 15, 2014 19:29
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LloydDobler posted:Just last night a friend had a redbox movie due and asked me to swing by McDonald's so he could drop it off. The machine wouldn't accept the movie for some reason, so we had to drive around until we found a Walgreen's, which did accept it. Thank god for Netflix. Even that minor hassle reminded me of how much I hated video stores. Where do you live that you don't have at least two Redboxes near each other? I lived a block away from an intersection that I poo poo you not had 6 Redboxes, and a Blockbuster kiosk.
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Oct 15, 2014 19:35
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LloydDobler posted:All you guys waxing nostalgic had a very different experience than I ever did. I loving hated going to the video store. Big chain or local, didn't matter, they never ever had what I wanted to see, or my second choice, or my third. Never enough copies of anything, cost almost as much as going to the real movies, I ended up just re-renting Die Hard every loving time I went there. Even as a kid you hated it? Thats when it was great because those lovely horror movie covers still looked really scary and all the action movies looked badass. When I was 8 years old I could have spent an entire weekend in a video store without even watching anything, just browsing the covers and reading the summaries on the back.
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Oct 15, 2014 19:44
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LloydDobler posted:All you guys waxing nostalgic had a very different experience than I ever did. I loving hated going to the video store. Big chain or local, didn't matter, they never ever had what I wanted to see, or my second choice, or my third. Never enough copies of anything, cost almost as much as going to the real movies, I ended up just re-renting Die Hard every loving time I went there. The video store wasn't that well liked if all you ever went in for was new releases. There was plenty of comedy shows at the time that made satire out of the limited copies, the slacker employees and too many forms of IDs required for registering member ship. It was hated the same way the people despised the phone company because there was no competition. If you didn't have a lot of money and wanted to see a movie out of the theater, you were stuck with the video store. But now that there is competition, video stores have the opportune time to proof their worth in the new market. The ones I've been into have now become much more community friendly and offer so much more to customers with better prices. It's a store model that's very much improved from the hussle-and-bussle era where EVERYONE came into the same store demanding to rent Tim Burton's Batman only to go home with something else.
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Oct 15, 2014 20:21
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Iron Crowned posted:Where do you live that you don't have at least two Redboxes near each other? I don't think I've ever seen a blockbuster kiosk and I've only ever seen redboxes at McDonald's.
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Oct 15, 2014 21:54
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computer parts posted:I don't think I've ever seen a blockbuster kiosk and I've only ever seen redboxes at McDonald's. Places you are guaranteed to find a Redbox kiosk: -McDonald's -Walgreens -Local grocery stores -Higher end gas stations
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Oct 15, 2014 22:09
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I think the only places with Redboxes around here are Walmart (gently caress that) and Walgreens.
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Oct 15, 2014 22:43
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Gonz posted:I haven't been to a video store since all the Hollywood Video and Blockbuster stores went out of business years ago and started selling off everything inside their buildings, which seems like ages ago. But today, out of curiosity, I did Google the area to see if there were any family run businesses still in operation, and lo and behold, I found Video Paradise, right outside of Phoenix. Organized crime front. Basticle posted:When I was a kid we had a local mom and pop video rental store that also had an ice cream parlor inside. poo poo ruled. Thanks to this thread I googled to see if there were any local rental places, the one near here is apparently a combination video rental, ice cream, post office. Gonna swing by sometime soon.
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Oct 15, 2014 23:22
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computer parts posted:I don't think I've ever seen a blockbuster kiosk and I've only ever seen redboxes at McDonald's. This must be a regional thing because I have NEVER seen a redbox at a McDonalds E: in Chicago
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Oct 16, 2014 17:28
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Dr. Platypus posted:This must be a regional thing because I have NEVER seen a redbox at a McDonalds I've never seen them either, and I'm in Phoenix. It's a brilliant idea though.
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Oct 17, 2014 02:14
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The only video store I've seen (or entered) in the last decade is Scarecrow, which is awesome, except it's a 45min drive from me 
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Oct 17, 2014 03:24
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Iron Crowned posted:Where do you live that you don't have at least two Redboxes near each other? My friend lives in a semi-industrial part of town so yeah retail is sparse. There are 3 within walking distance of my house. Basebf555 posted:Even as a kid you hated it? Well I'm old, they still had VHS and Beta sections when I was a kid. But yeah maybe it's just selective memory, or maybe I just lived near stores with too high traffic, but it just feels like over and over, the video store never had what I wanted to see. Two of the first movies I ever rented from Netflix were Xanadu and Dark Star. I hadn't seen them since I was a kid, because video stores don't carry them.
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Oct 17, 2014 07:29
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LloydDobler posted:My friend lives in a semi-industrial part of town so yeah retail is sparse. There are 3 within walking distance of my house. The VHS era was the dark ages if you wanted to watch every movie out there. Given the video store's limited storage for carrying bulky VHS tapes, changes are they didn't have everything available. That goes double for mom and pop stores. If you wanted a certain video of an older film, you'd often have to special order it from catalogs. Also, I checked on Xanadu and Dark Star and that seemed like more of an issue with the distribution than the video store. Xanadu wasn't released on VHS by Universal until 1997 and Dark Star was as late as 2001 before it hit VHS. It might've been released through third-party distributors in the late-80's, but even then you'd still have to look around for them. Heavy Metal took 15 years before it was ever released on home video. It's a generational thing. Nowadays you can watch everything on DVD. Even the really terrible B-movies that were never that good that nobody asked for.
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Oct 17, 2014 16:37
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FrostedButts posted:The VHS era was the dark ages if you wanted to watch every movie out there. Given the video store's limited storage for carrying bulky VHS tapes, changes are they didn't have everything available. That goes double for mom and pop stores. If you wanted a certain video of an older film, you'd often have to special order it from catalogs. If you wanted to watch a TV show on VHS, you pretty much had to sign up to a subscription from Columbia House or Time-Life off a TV ad. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzLi3lf4p8I If you look at the fine print in that ad, it's $19.95 per cassette that contains four episodes. You can buy the entire series on DVD now from Amazon for $32 bucks.
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Oct 17, 2014 23:54
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I know a guy who owns the entire Highlander TV series on VHS. It takes up an entire giant bookshelf. I can't imagine how much he dropped for it.
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Oct 18, 2014 00:58
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Jose Oquendo posted:I know a guy who owns the entire Highlander TV series on VHS. It takes up an entire giant bookshelf. I can't imagine how much he dropped for it. My local Video Universe has an entire bookcase of Dark Shadows VHS tapes. Based on the length of the series, I'm willing to bet that's not the entire series, but I could be wrong.
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Oct 18, 2014 03:12
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Probably not the whole series. I'm sure there's longer series that would take up a ton of space, like the Star Treks.. It's just , why that show? Of all the shows to go all-in on and make a big commitment, why Highlander?
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Oct 18, 2014 03:25
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Jose Oquendo posted:Probably not the whole series. I'm sure there's longer series that would take up a ton of space, like the Star Treks.. It's just , why that show? Of all the shows to go all-in on and make a big commitment, why Highlander? I remember Star Trek on VHS. Those where single episode tapes, so buying the entire series on VHS was something at MSRP of $19.99 would be something like a grand-and-half!
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Oct 18, 2014 03:46
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Dr. Platypus posted:This must be a regional thing because I have NEVER seen a redbox at a McDonalds McDonalds was the first place I ever saw a Redbox. It was like 10 years ago and I didn't know what the gently caress a Redbox was so I was baffled as to why McDonalds was getting into the DVD rental business.
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Oct 30, 2014 05:15
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A friend of mine was actively going to the local blockbuster to rent movies up until about a year ago when they finally closed down. She was too poor to afford internet and had free wifi at her apartment but it wasn't good enough to actually stream netflix reliably. Also she didn't drive and blockbuster was a closer walk than redbox. When they closed down they were selling all DVD's for $1 so I bought a David Blaine DVD but when I got to the counter I found out it was already marked at $1 and had been for some time.
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Dec 29, 2014 03:31
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Back in the 90's, there were three big video chains here in Winnipeg. Blockbuster, Rogers Video, and Jumbo Video, as well as several small businesses. All of the chains are now gone, as well as most of the small stores. There was also a game rental chain, Microplay, that recently closed its last location. No dedicated video arcades left either (the last one had to close because mall management didn't like the sort of people it was attracting). Aside from a few hole-in-the-walls in low income parts of town, the only place left to rent movies is Movie Village. It's been around since the 80's (and my family's been going there on and off since the early 90's), and although it's still pretty good, it ain't what it used to be... Its heyday was in the VHS era when it was still in its other location, a fairly large high-ceilinged (with foam popcorn hanging from it) building with a mezzanine. Holy crap, did they have EVERYTHING! Huge foreign section! Art films! Cult! Independent! Local! The downturn began when they switched to DVD. The smaller boxes allowed them to have more films, but the foreign and obscure selection suffered. I've discovered from reading cinephile forums and looking on eBay that there are a fair number of films that have either not made the jump to digital, or are out-of-print and exceedingly expensive. Thankfully, they managed to carry a HUGE chunk of The Criterion Collection, which definitely helped to soften the blow. But then the value of the property went up, they sold, and merged with their tiny sister business Music Trader down the street. In order to fit the much smaller space, they said they would sell off their duplicates, but some of their older Criterion stock plus a lot of their better sci-fi took off as well. Before After They still carry some good stuff, including a substantial TV series section, but the classics section is bloated with public domain junk, and most of the new Criterion they bring in is from the leftist/PC side (the section of town they're in is hippie/hipster central). My to watch list is about 120-130 films deep, and although I don't expect them to have all of it (it's pretty heavy with 60's art films & silents), the last time I checked they had maybe 20 of them. But even with all of Movie Village's shortcomings, they still have a ton of stuff that you'll NEVER see on Netflix (and I'm talking American Netflix here). Synthetic Hermit fucked around with this message at 12:18 on Jan 15, 2015 |
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Jan 15, 2015 12:15
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Bloody Hedgehog posted:I recently moved to a new area, and was surprised to find there was actually a video store here. Still haven't gone in, and probably won't, but it's weirdly fascinating that a place like that still exists. I guess they rely on a lot of business from the no-internet folks and the indian res not far away. Quoting myself, as this place is now closed. I was walking by when I noticed it was empty, and they had a sign on the door that was all "We got put out of business by the big impersonal corporate NETFLIX! Can you believe it?!" Yes. Yes, I can believe that.
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Jan 15, 2015 12:19
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You can pretty much always get free rental codes for Redbox so if you lived near one that might be a decent deal
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Jan 15, 2015 12:31
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Magic Pus posted:Yes! I live very near to a two-story behemoth of a video store called I Luv Video. It has an incredible selection, including titles that were only ever released on VHS. Tuesday is Free Beer day and I can easily spend an hour browsing and sippin'. Down the street is a similarly great place called Vulcan Video. Austin has some definite problems, but a lack of video stores is not one of them! I still owe Vulcan like $7. I'm never in that part of town anymore, though.
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Feb 2, 2015 20:13
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I would totally still go to a video store if I knew where any were around me. I kept going to Blockbuster until it closed all its stores in my area even though the selection there got pretty sparse towards the end. Maybe it's just a nostalgia thing. I used to live in a smaller town back in middle school and there was a family owned video store that kept SNES and Genesis games in stock well into the mid-2000s. It was pretty rad.
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Feb 3, 2015 04:30
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There used to be a video store within walking distance of my place but a few years ago it shut down and turned into a Wingstop. I'm surprisingly ok with that turn of events.
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Feb 3, 2015 20:39
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I've posted this elsewhere on the forums but I'll say it here too - the Blockbuster store near my house (and the only rental store left in the area) only closed in mid-2014, and I used it up until like 2013. Their membership program was the poo poo, because for $15 a month, I could rent one thing at a time, bring it back when I was done and immediately swap it out for something else. Since the store was only a couple blocks from my house, I used this to play a bunch of 360/PS3 games. I was a member there for like a year and a half, and in that time, I probably saved a couple hundred dollars on video games. This store used to get new releases the day they came out, too, so like I'd stop by after work on a day when a game was released, pick it up, beat it within a couple days, bring it back and rent another one, all for $15. Eventually they stopped getting the new releases that I wanted, so I cancelled my membership. And then at the beginning of 2014, they started having a going out of business sale, which ended up lasting for several months. Now it's just sitting there vacant, but it still looks exactly like a Blockbuster on the inside. The carpet and racks were left in there, so I still pass it on my way home and see that. I do miss it, because going to Blockbuster as a kid to rent VHS tapes, DVDs, N64/PlayStation/PS2 games with friends and family was a big part of my childhood. I loved browsing the racks and sometimes finding poo poo I never would have found otherwise. Most kids born today or even a few years ago aren't going to experience that at all and that's a bummer  It's just that the times have changed. Kids nowadays will be browsing lists on Netflix Instant/Xbox Games On Demand/etc. to look for stuff to watch/play, which is probably more convenient and useful, but you definitely don't get the same experience from doing that that you got by looking through tons of stuff at a video store.
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Feb 4, 2015 06:28
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There was a big hualabaloo here in Los Angeles because one of the local sweetheart rental stores, Vidiots, was about to shutter it's doors. Then Megan Ellison stepped in like a loving boss and saved the poo poo out of it. Wish stories like this were more common. http://laist.com/2015/01/31/vidiots_saved_megan_ellison.php 
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Feb 5, 2015 02:28
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Ah, the video store. Back in Northern Maine every convenience and grocery store (even appliance stores!) would have a video section run by bored teens that didn't care what you rented. This meant I got to learn about the birds & the bees from such great films as Hardbodies, Playboy's Playmate Playoffs, Stag Party and 2069: A Sex Oddyssey. When I graduated college Netflix was starting to pick up, and it allowed me to get DVD's of stuff the local places didn't have. It's how I was able to get through AFI's 100 Greatest Films list. caligulamprey posted:I supplement my Netflix subscription with frequent trips to Movie Madness in Portland because Netflix for some reason flat-out refuses to stock a solid 90% of Blu-Ray reissues, especially genre titles.
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Feb 10, 2015 16:03
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ruddiger posted:There was a big hualabaloo here in Los Angeles because one of the local sweetheart rental stores, Vidiots, was about to shutter it's doors. Then Megan Ellison stepped in like a loving boss and saved the poo poo out of it. Wish stories like this were more common. quote:A video store in 2015 . How Quaint. What a loving knob. His nose is turned up so far it's gone up his own rear end. But I guess that's what I get for reading article comments on any site, ever. But anyway, in the LAist's previous article about Vidiots they talked about how maybe video stores would have to turn to a library or museum type system, I assume meaning having outside financial support from the public or some private investors or whatever. That actually sounds plausible in the near future, I mean libraries are already getting movies in their collection, and at my library the movie section is probably more popular overall than our book selection. So maybe several years down the line we'll start seeing movie-only libraries open up that are privately-funded. VV Right because that article that was just linked never happened, no way would rich "eccentric" investors maintain a private museum/library for the public. King Vidiot fucked around with this message at 17:03 on Feb 10, 2015 |
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Feb 10, 2015 16:29
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King Vidiot posted:What a loving knob. His nose is turned up so far it's gone up his own rear end. But I guess that's what I get for reading article comments on any site, ever. Considering libraries themselves are having trouble staying open and funded, there's pretty much zero chance anything like a video library will ever happen.
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Feb 10, 2015 16:34
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Synthetic Hermit posted:Aside from a few hole-in-the-walls in low income parts of town, the only place left to rent movies is Movie Village. It's been around since the 80's (and my family's been going there on and off since the early 90's), and although it's still pretty good, it ain't what it used to be... I hope I never don't have a Movie Village Eraserhead magnet on my fridge. My favourite memories of Movie Village: - the smell of the place (I think you know what I mean) - the STAFF PICKS section - the creaky door to the porn section (that door must have been installed for comedy) - spending a half hour discussing cannibal films with an employee one night - the aforementioned Criterion section - the 7 movies for $7 deal on Sundays Trivia: there used to be a second location near Rumors Comedy Club for a brief while. This rather sad photo of the place sort of sums up the independent video store now: 
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Feb 10, 2015 20:09
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InfiniteZero posted:I hope I never don't have a Movie Village Eraserhead magnet on my fridge. Mine's a Sergei Eisenstein: 
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Feb 11, 2015 00:13
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I went to video stores a lot as a kid (there's a Family Video vaguely near my house, but I never go), but I don't have a lot of vivid memories regarding it. I do have one, however: My local blockbuster also rented video games, and would occasionally have a console with a game that would let you play for a while before resetting. I remember renting a copy of Comix Zone and absolutely loving it, with the exception of me getting one of those resets-occasionally carts. I remember talking to my mom asking to go back to return it, but by the time I did (we were always allowed to rent two games each, so we had other stuff to play) it was practically time to return it. It wasn't until far later that I was able to play more than five minutes of the game.
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Feb 11, 2015 00:29
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