Blockbuster To Close Remaining US Locations

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."

Comments

Wait, what?

[sunderland56]

Blockbuster still exists?

Re:Wait, what?

[mcgrew]

Their business model was morbidly flawed; they started renting movies when tapes cost over a hundred dollars each, so four bucks to rent one wasn't a bad deal. But then tapes (and later DVDs) came down in price, Blockbuster's competitors had prices down to a buck a tape/DVD and Blockbuster acted like they held a monopoly. Hell, there used to be a Blockbuster right across from Family Video on 6th street here, with FamVid DVDs at $1 and Blockbuster DVDs at $4 and you could often BUY the DVD Blockbuster was renting for $4 at WalMart for $5.

Meanwhile, there are still dozens of Family Video stores here in town, as well as lots of RedBox kiosks. Blockbuster was greedy to the point of mental retardation. No way can you rent a $5 or $10 or even $20 item for $4.

About time

[KBehemoth]

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

Re:About time

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:About time

[EdIII]

The analog perfection that is VHS. Obviously.

Seriously though, most DVDs and BluRays are absolute shitty encodes. Combine that with low-end equipment and you have overall poor quality with very visible artifacts like the infamous waterfall effect. I almost have a seizure watching Voyager on Netflix. That damn background in the medical bay is a wonderful example of such limitations.

That's what you get with modern digital video formats. It allows for poorer performance and artifacts with lossy compression and non-perfect display software that has no problems fucking a frame or too or going half ass on the decode. Well mastered DVD/BluRay on appropriate equipment does not have this problem though. Unfortunately for most you are not going to find that at Walmart.

So when you compare a DVD version against a VHS it's easy to see the lack of digital artifacts as an "improvement". Fuck. Compare it to LaserDisc? No competition at all. LaserDisc is still unreal compared to DVD. It took BluRay on high end equipment to finally beat LaserDisc. Stats may say otherwise, but real world performance is the best metric.

Tl;DR : Not all DVD/BluRay masters are the same and the low end makes VHS look good by comparison.

Really sucks

[GodfatherofSoul]

I loved going in and buying the used flikcks; sometimes 4 DVDs for $20 or 2 Blurays for $20. I built up a nice physical collection which I much prefer to just files. If they shut down any local stores I'll make a point to be there early for the sell-off day.

I guess I'm in that minority that likes the in-store experience and browsing shelves rather than clunky cable box UIs.

Re:Really sucks

[gstoddart]

I guess I'm in that minority that likes the in-store experience and browsing shelves rather than clunky cable box UIs.

I'm with you on this one.

I still buy CDs and BluRay disks by going to the store and looking at what's there. I prefer to have the physical thing, instead of some digital thing they can decide on a whim I no longer 'own' and can no longer use.

Admittedly, I haven't rented a movie in years ... but I'm certainly not paying to rent it on-line and then pay my ISP for the bandwidth needed to stream it.

I'm definitely not prepared to give up physical media.

Re:Ding dong the witch is dead!

[rubycodez]

nonsense, they were success in early 80s. that business model was what every VHS shop had, except BlockBuster's rates were lower, they had more of the popular movies and the fine was nominal.

The Reasons

[CanHasDIY]

Dish's CEO said, 'This is not an easy decision, yet consumer demand is clearly moving to digital distribution of video entertainment.'

Oh, sure, blame it all on the consumers!

Let's be realistic here: Yes, increasing consumer demand for instant gratification is part of the video stores downfall, but they're experiencing an equal amount of pressure from the content cartels, who have spent years trying inadvertently (or intentionally) to kill off the rental industry with their obsession over controlling how consumers can access media.

Content cartels... like Dish Network.

Netflix was a reason but not the only reason

[UnknowingFool]

It would be easy to say that Netflix killed Blockbuster, and certainly Blockbuster inflicted harm on themselves. Netflix did play a part but Blockbuster's problems come from a business model that came under threat from multiple fronts.

Netflix challenged Blockbuster by offering both instant streaming and titles by mail services but mainly in older titles and TV shows. Blockbuster still had an advantage for consumers in new releases.

Unfortunately, the rise of VOD competitors like Apple's iTunes, Amazon Instant, VUDU, Microsoft, etc offered consumers better choices when it came to new releases and offered advantages over Blockbuster. Even at the same price of a Blockbuster rental, consumers didn't have to physically get and return the title. Stock was never a problem, and the catalogs were better than a consumer could get at a Blockbuster's location.

For consumers that could not stream video, Redbox has taken away the last advantage of Blockbuster. The prices are cheaper and even if the selection is as limited as a Blockbuster location, there are far more Redbox locations. Since Redbox's model allows rentals to be returned to any location, this means the death of Blockbuster in many locations.

Re:A few are still around

[Mitreya]

My sister still likes going to the store and browsing.

"Digital delivery" for which the market has spoken does not work in combination with crappy (monopolistic and sometimes transfer-capped) internet.

Having a near-by rental store had its benefits.

independent video rental?

[schlachter]

Blockbuster pushed out many of the independent video rental places. I wonder if some of them will make a come back, to fill what ever niche there will be for renting physical videos. Or maybe that niche just won't exist anymore.