Blockbuster Video is seen as a joke these days, as the last refuge for anyone who doesn't know the magic words "Downloadable/Streaming Online Video".
(Even modern day pop culture like TV show True Blood is taking jabs at it, the latest show mocking their business practices.)
But before the Internet was widespread, kids of the 80s, now in their teens in the 90s, had no such luck when seeing video media. The Internet was choking on Real Media.
(Barely known now, but was a streaming technology used often for some of the first videos you could stream online.)
Be it for TV shows, movies, documentaries or..."documentaries on anatomy" (hint: "The Internet is for..."), the only choice was to go to the local video store and pay between (AUD)$1 to $7 for a video. If it was new it cost $7, having only a day to bring it back. If you were lucky and the video was old it was $3 with a week to return it. If you were late for returns? Expect your ability to rent frozen until fines were paid.)
And it gets better. If you go to before 1999, you didn't have streaming video services. You lacked Blu Ray. You didn't even get DVD. You had two options, one a flash in the pan with its existence.
LaserDisc or VCR cassette, AKA VHS tapes.
(LaserDisc dying almost as quickly as it arrived.)
So with the wide option of VHS tapes or...VHS tapes, we'd head off to the local video store for a big black rectangle of plastic containing reels of magnetic tape. It's seen as bad resolution now, but it was fine for back then.
VHS tapes rarely had anything exciting. No extras. Only rare movies had widescreen.
(Most TVs were 4:3.)
But sadly one thing carried across since the 80s: The adverts.
In the beginning of pretty much every movie we paid to rent, adverts.
However, back then we got the one thing they deny us now.
The adverts could be fast-forwarded through.
(When was the last time you could skip or speed through ads on a DVD/BR rental?)
Back then I went to a local store called Focus Video. Dead now, but a good company while it lasted. Bought out by Blockbuster Video, the Internet was so small I had never heard of this new company.
(For a teen in the early days of the Internet, it wasn't as quick as now. No smartphones. No Twitter. No Wikipedia. No Google. Nothing helping the search yet. You had the Library, the phone book and slow PCs with screaming 56k modems running Windows 3.1.1 or Windows 95 in '96 and Windows 98 in '99.)
Much like McDonald's, Pizza Hut and many other American businesses, they had expanded into Australia to gauge their success. Blockbuster did pretty well, and even now in Australia, unlike the US headquarters, is still alive with many stores open.
(Although I don't know if they'll survive if the US H.Q pulls the plug.)
In the 90s I rented a lot of the VHS tapes from them as a teen. Picture your smartphone/tablet's book application that shows a shelf of book covers. Now imagine a large building (or small, depending on their success) filled with shelves of titles in a similar way, some shelved like books on a bookshelf, spine to you.
No download time, no broken streams, just get the box, collect the tape at the counter, pay, leave.
(And the one thing they have over DVD and BR discs: the discs get one small scratch, the film skips. You could hurl a VHS tape across a football field and STILL play it without a problem.)
(To be continued...)
(Even modern day pop culture like TV show True Blood is taking jabs at it, the latest show mocking their business practices.)
But before the Internet was widespread, kids of the 80s, now in their teens in the 90s, had no such luck when seeing video media. The Internet was choking on Real Media.
(Barely known now, but was a streaming technology used often for some of the first videos you could stream online.)
Be it for TV shows, movies, documentaries or..."documentaries on anatomy" (hint: "The Internet is for..."), the only choice was to go to the local video store and pay between (AUD)$1 to $7 for a video. If it was new it cost $7, having only a day to bring it back. If you were lucky and the video was old it was $3 with a week to return it. If you were late for returns? Expect your ability to rent frozen until fines were paid.)
And it gets better. If you go to before 1999, you didn't have streaming video services. You lacked Blu Ray. You didn't even get DVD. You had two options, one a flash in the pan with its existence.
LaserDisc or VCR cassette, AKA VHS tapes.
(LaserDisc dying almost as quickly as it arrived.)
So with the wide option of VHS tapes or...VHS tapes, we'd head off to the local video store for a big black rectangle of plastic containing reels of magnetic tape. It's seen as bad resolution now, but it was fine for back then.
VHS tapes rarely had anything exciting. No extras. Only rare movies had widescreen.
(Most TVs were 4:3.)
But sadly one thing carried across since the 80s: The adverts.
In the beginning of pretty much every movie we paid to rent, adverts.
However, back then we got the one thing they deny us now.
The adverts could be fast-forwarded through.
(When was the last time you could skip or speed through ads on a DVD/BR rental?)
Back then I went to a local store called Focus Video. Dead now, but a good company while it lasted. Bought out by Blockbuster Video, the Internet was so small I had never heard of this new company.
(For a teen in the early days of the Internet, it wasn't as quick as now. No smartphones. No Twitter. No Wikipedia. No Google. Nothing helping the search yet. You had the Library, the phone book and slow PCs with screaming 56k modems running Windows 3.1.1 or Windows 95 in '96 and Windows 98 in '99.)
Much like McDonald's, Pizza Hut and many other American businesses, they had expanded into Australia to gauge their success. Blockbuster did pretty well, and even now in Australia, unlike the US headquarters, is still alive with many stores open.
(Although I don't know if they'll survive if the US H.Q pulls the plug.)
In the 90s I rented a lot of the VHS tapes from them as a teen. Picture your smartphone/tablet's book application that shows a shelf of book covers. Now imagine a large building (or small, depending on their success) filled with shelves of titles in a similar way, some shelved like books on a bookshelf, spine to you.
No download time, no broken streams, just get the box, collect the tape at the counter, pay, leave.
(And the one thing they have over DVD and BR discs: the discs get one small scratch, the film skips. You could hurl a VHS tape across a football field and STILL play it without a problem.)
(To be continued...)
