movie rental stores

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Are there any movie rental stores around in your area anymore? My area doesn't have them anymore. There's only Redbox kiosks over here now.

I wouldn't even know where to find one around me now, and I even live in a major city with most amenities. The only access I would have to renting movies now is to use online streaming services. I have a pay-as-you-go account with the one that used to be called Blinkbox. I can't afford the expense of things like Netflix.

The only problem with streaming, for me, is that I also can't afford an unlimited data plan for my internet service. I get 10 GB per month and if I stream all the movies I want, I overrun my data and get hit with massive fees for going over.

So my stream rentals have dwindled to once a month and now none at all.

It makes me sad, because back in the hayday of physical rentals, I was constantly at the video store and kept up with the latest movies.

I recently noticed that the old Blockbuster store is still vacant.

In the 90s one of my favorite things was to go to the video store and pick out a couple of movies. It was VHS when I started and went to DVD.

I had a really good Blockbuster near me, and I also used Hollywood Video and also two local smaller stores, independents that had more obscure movies.

At first though, I remember, I had sensory overload from the cases on the shelves! I found that my thinking/processing just froze while trying to take in all those movie cases and titles, because the overload of visual information becamse a blur to me.

I eventually learned a method of very systematically looking at each one in turn, and after that I tremendously enjoyed the process of choosing. I liked to systematically start at one side of the "New Arrivals" and work my way around to the other side, before making my decision and picking the ones that sparked my interest the most.

GOD I loved it! Then checking out, and driving home with my prizes, and settling in for a movie night, making some popcorn and putting on the movies.

It was all very much a ritual and it was a lot of fun.

There's no ritual now, with instant streaming. I mean, it's convenient and really great that you don't even have to leave your home or get dressed anymore if you decide you want to rent a movie.

But on the other hand, some of the excitement and anticipation has been taken away too. I really, really miss physical rental stores.

I remember how shocked I was when places like Blockbuster first proliferated. Circa 1982. It revolutionized the culture to almost the extent that the Internet revolutionized the culture circa 1996-1997.

This was around the time when people started being able to buy phones, rather than rent them, in the United States.

1984 was the key year for phones in the US, I find. This was the year when Ma Bell was found to be an illegal monopoly. Thus began the competition for phone service which continues today.

In 1982, I didn't even have a TV in my apartment, no less a VCR. VCR's started become affordable for most people in about 1982, though.

I used to like them too. Walking around and seeing all the stuff. Heck I even worked at a one. Vivid memories of it, mostly good, though honestly it was kind of a rough gig. Going through & organizing the shelves was great, like when I worked in the library, except the customers were constantly wrecking them Customers that come in asking for stuff that hasn't come out in the theaters yet ... good times. There was one around the corner from my house as late as 2007 and in a small town I drove through last year there was a mom & pop one still going.

Not sure that it was quite the same over here, kraftie. My first VCR was an ex-rental Sony C7, which I bought on a bank loan in 1984 for around £450. By the early years of the 21st century new VHS machines were on sale for £150 or less, but the quality was not impressive, even from the likes of Sony and Panasonic.

In the US, by 1985, VCR's for $200 to $400 were ubiquitous--as confirmed by research.

In 1977, one family had a Betamax which weighed 40 lbs,and cost $2,000. VCR's were in a similar state in 1977 as televisions were in the mid-to-late 40's.

By about 1985, VCR's were in the similar state as TV's in the early-to-mid 50s.

We had a VHS rental place but that shut decades ago. You could rent the tapes out and return them instore or if it was out of hours post them through the letter box - I did use it for a while until one night when i had a terrible mix up with my tapes which resulted in me retuning through the door in a store branded case an adult movie that i owned upon realising my error i posted the original VHS i rented in a none store branded case. I never went back in after that nor did i ask for my blue movie back

I have a lot of memories about movie rental stores! Back when I was a kid, my parents used to take me & my brothers to Blockbusters every weekend. I always liked walking around the video store & seeing all the different movies. Sometimes we would rent 3 or 4 movies when we were there. When we got home, we would make our pop corn & snacks & start watching the movies. We used to call it a "movie marathon." Blockbusters also rented video games, and my brothers would also rent them. I also remember that the stores were always very busy on Fridays & weekends. We had 2 VCRS, and my Dad used to make a copy of the movies on to a blank VHS video cassette for our home video collection. I also remember the advertising slogans of Blockbusters were "Wow! What a difference!" and "Make it a Blockbuster night!"



Originally, we used to rent our movies from a small, independent store called Videos Galore, owned by a husband & wife couple, which closed in late 1994 or early 1995, when I was 9 years old. I suppose they were a victim of competition with Blockbusters Video & Hollywood Video. We also used to go to another independent video store which also rented laser discs & also had a few Betamax releases. My family had VHS VCRs & a laser disc player, but we never owned a Betamax VCR.



Growing up, I wanted to work in a video store when I grew up, but it never happened. I work for the San Diego Public Library, and DVDs are a big part of our business. I spend most of my work shift checking in & shelving DVDs. Today I do not even know where a video store is any more. In San Diego, they gradually started shutting down about 12 years ago, and the last store that I know of closed about four or five years ago. Today, I see movies for sale in grocery store check out lines, and I also see kiosks outside of businesses which rent & sell DVDs.



Like another poster said on here, the new online & "streaming" services are a lot cheaper & more convenient, but using them is just not the same as renting or checking out a movie; it is not as "exciting" as actually waiting to get your movie, taking it home, and watching the movie as a special occasion. I occasionally check out a DVD from the library where I work, but I never use any of the new computerised services.

The last one in the cities around where my parents live was BlockBuster which of coarse went out of business. I haven't seen or heard of any where I live now so I'll assume they aren't any. I have seen the Redbox things at WalMart around where my parents live not too long ago but that's it.

There is still one in my area a few miles from me. I saw another one in Seaside, OR and I was shocked lot of them were VHS and they had some DVDs and it was like a time capsule. These two are private owned.

I'm getting so nostalgic on this thread. I wish I could time-travel back and re-live this stuff. It was good times, for me. I think I thought it would last forever.

I'm feeling so sad.

Does the UK have any rental boxes where you go and rent a DVD from the machine and they charge you per night?

Here we call it a Redbox. I would rent a new movie every week because I got a free rental every Tuesday until I got a new phone and it didn't support it. But they only do new releases and you have to have a bank card. Those have pretty much replaced rental stores plus cable networks now or satellite allow streaming and On Demand where you can just watch a movie or a TV show without having to see it on cable. No internet required. Plus you can rent movies on there too or buy them and even Google Play has it now and youtube. People just don't want to drive to rent movies and then drive to return them anymore. That is how I feel when I have rented from the local video store here and then almost forgetting about it.

Sadly I don't think we have anything that is like Redbox in the UK, nope. Thanks for the suggestion though, League Girl, I appreciate you trying to come up with an equivalent for me.

Funny, I used to live in the US and I remember Redbox from all those years ago; it's good to know those are actually still going! I wish we had the same thing.

I still think of VCR's, VHS tapes, etc. as being advanced technology LOL

I go back to the days of rabbits ears, maybe 6-8 channels on the TV, and having to get up to change the channel. And of twisting the dial in order to get UHF channels.