10-07-2016, 02:44 AM
(10-07-2016, 02:08 AM)Wes Mantooth Wrote: Let me just say that I understand that this title may come across similar to "Old man yells at cloud". I realize it may make me old just to gripe about video stores disappearing. And that's ok. I'm still going to gripe though.
So yeah, I really miss going to the video store. Part of that may be nostalgia, but I think I have good reason to think it was, and still is, a far superior option to what we have now. And I'm curious to hear what everyone else thinks. I guess I'll make my case for why they were awesome...
1.) I don't always know what I want to watch. Sometimes the best movie to watch is one you completely forgot about, or you haven't heard of. There not a simple way to just scroll through random titles these days. You really either have to know what you want, or you stuck side-scrolling through about the same 50 movies on Netflix.
I don't watch a lot of tv, so I don't see a lot of movie trailers. And if I did see one I have a short attention span. That trailer is forgotten two weeks later. There's all kinds of movies that get made nowadays that I don't know about. And I would if there was still a store I could just walk up and down the wall to check it out.
2.) If you do want to look at a ton of different options now it can take quite awhile. Yeah, the world wild interweb is crazy convenient and it more often that not made everything an easier task. Just not video browsing.
If you went to the video store, which I'm sure almost all of you did, you know what I'm talking about here. You got to almost be an expert scanning the new release wall. It was like a 6th sense. You can walk by about 150 movies in about 2 minutes and gather all the info you need. By looking at the box, how many copies they had, who was in it, etc. You might see a pair of nice cans out of the corner of your eye, 4 aisles over, and think "I'm renting those titties". You know how long that would take to do scrolling through 500 titles on Amazon?
Do you want to know who's in the movie, when it was made, how long is is. Just look at the box. Take the .05 seconds it's take to look at and instantly recognize who the stars are. Want to do that on Netflix. Sure, no problem. Just scroll down to more info, click on it, wait 5 seconds for another page to load, click on starring, wait another 5 seconds, decide you don't want to watch, back out of that page, then back out of that page, and you're back to where you started. Take that vs simply turning your head.
3.) The cost. Blockbuster always ran either .99 cent old rentals, or some 2 for 1 deal. Either way, you could old movies for a buck, and you got them for a week. You want to watch Goonies today? Netflix doesn't have. Amazon Prime doesn't have it. Hulu doesn't have it. You're going to have to rent it on Amazon or Itunes. It'll probably cost you 3 or 4 bucks. And you better watch in a day or you're renting it again. Want to watch tonight and save it for your kids for the weekend. You're renting it twice.
Blockbuster also had some deal where you paid like 20 bucks a month and you got a new release every week, unlimited old movies, and I think a game rental. It was an unbelievable deal if you used it enough. And was even better with the online thing cuz you could take your dvd mailers in the store to exchange for new releases.
4.) The demise of the video market killed a lot of middle range of movie deals. Now it's either almost all huge blockbusters or indies. (Huge budgets and small budgets) There's no money in the in-between stuff cuz they used to make all their money in vhs and dvd sales. The big problem for me is a lot of my favorites movies would never get made now. Tommy Boy? Forget about it. Waynes World (the first one). Nope. Office Space, Happy Gilmore, Airheads. None of those would get financed now. That's why movies like Super Troopers 2 have to be crowd-funded. No studio is paying for that movie. Look at the quality of Joe Dirt (studio money) vs Joe Dirt 2.
5.) The trip the store was kind of fun. You run into people you know occasionally, you get to know the employees, you get to ask their opinions, you maybe pick up some pizza or something real close to the store. I think there's value in all of that. And grabbing a copy of something you weren't sure would be in or that's been out came with a satisfaction that isn't replicated.
6.) If you like owning movies you could not beat the deals. You could get 4 Pre Viewed new release for like 15-20 bucks. It was great. And that's when DVD's were as much as Blu-Rays are now.
What do you guys think? Am I nuts? I just know a lot of nights I want to watch a movie and no idea what. Trying to find something is kind of exhausting, only to find out Netflix doesn't have it, and I don't want to pay 5 bucks to watch The Program or The Blair Witch or something.
I agree with you for all the reasons you stated. That being said, I do like Movies on Demand through Time Warner. Late at night and nothing's on TV, I can usually find something good for free. For those that aren't familiar with it, the newer releases you pay for, the older ones are free. The only downside is that the free selection changes continually, the ones they're advertising anyway. You can get other free movies, but you have to know what you want, because they're listed alphabetically but not by title. Something like "search movies listed A-C, D-F, G-I...etc.
