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Blockbuster To Close Remaining US Locations

Posted by Soulskill on from the internet-killed-the-video-star dept.

UnknowingFool writes "Blockbuster announced that it will close its remaining 300 U.S. locations by January and discontinue the DVD by mail service. Before being bought out by Dish, the chain was slowly closing locations. Dish's CEO said, 'This is not an easy decision, yet consumer demand is clearly moving to digital distribution of video entertainment.' From an all-time high of 9,000 locations in 2004, the chain has fallen on hard times and had emerged from bankruptcy in 2011."

8 of 419 comments (clear)

  1. Wait, what? by sunderland56 · · Score: 4, Funny

    Blockbuster still exists?

    1. Re:Wait, what? by dgatwood · · Score: 3, Funny

      Why do you take everything so figuratively?

      Gaaaah!

      [sound of head literally exploding]

      --

      Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.

    2. Re:Wait, what? by Rhacman · · Score: 3, Funny

      I'm not sure why someone would do that either but the way you talk about it perhaps they should make a movie about it. It would feature the heroic adventure of a person browsing and reserving a rental online then trekking to the climate controlled grocery store to pick up the disk from the kiosk along with their groceries.

      [spoiler] In the climax of the movie our hero returns the movie the next day and purchases a soda and bag of pretzels from the adjacent vending machines to celebrate the $2 he just saved. [/spoiler]

      --
      Account -> Discussions -> Disable Sigs
  2. About time by KBehemoth · · Score: 5, Funny

    They were supposed to close years ago. They never got the memo because they only communicate by telegraph.

    1. Re:About time by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      The courier was afraid to go into the store. He had a VHS that was late.

    2. Re:About time by TWiTfan · · Score: 1, Funny

      Yeah, one day you can tell your grandkids about what it was like to get DVD/blu-ray extra features like commentary tracks and making-of featurettes, and what it was like to watch a movie without seeing "Buffering" messages and heavy compression artifacts. Yep, streaming is so superior to those ancient physical discs alright.

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  3. I got a nice restaurant ... by perpenso · · Score: 3, Funny

    Mine only closed about a year ago. It was replaced by a nice restaurant. Here's hoping everyone else gets a nice replacement.

    1. Re:I got a nice restaurant ... by RenderSeven · · Score: 3, Funny

      The Bank Event Horizon - Many years ago this was a thriving, happy planet - people, cities, shops, a normal world. Except that on the high streets of these cities there were slightly more banks than one might have thought necessary. And slowly, insidiously, the number of the banks were increasing. It's a well-known economic phenomenon but tragic to see it in operation, for the more banks there were, the more they had to charge and the more had to be borrowed to pay for it. And the more they borrowed the higher the fees became, and the more the banks proliferated, until the whole economy of the place passed what I believe is termed the Bank Event Horizon, and it became no longer economically possible to build anything other than banks. Result - collapse, ruin and famine. Most of the population died out. Those few who had the right kind of genetic instability mutated into beings with no buttocks to carry wallets.

      An entire archeological strata made up of nothing but ATM cards, and above it... nothing"