[rubyn00bie]

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.

[thewebcount]

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]

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.)

[ghaff]

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]

They'd even rent VCRs and DVD players, which was a big deal early on when they were multiple hundreds of dollars.

[amyjess]

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...)

[bombcar]

https://www.gamefly.com exists but I feel it's days are numbered, what with console makers doing everything they can to tie games to accounts tied to a given console ...

[TedDoesntTalk]

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.

[throwaway675309]

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.