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Alaska's Last Two Blockbusters Are Closing, Leaving Just One In the US (adn.com)
According to Anchorage Daily News, the two remaining Blockbuster stores in Alaska are set to close, leaving just one location left in the United States. The last one standing in the U.S. is in Bend, Oregon. From the report: The stores, one on DeBarr Road in Anchorage and the other in Fairbanks, will close Monday for rental business, a post on the Facebook page for Blockbuster in Alaska said Thursday afternoon. They will reopen at noon Tuesday for an inventory sales that will run through July and August. Thursday's news follows a smattering of other recent Blockbuster closures across the state, which had 13 Blockbusters in 2013 and was down to nine stores by 2016. As Blockbuster stores disappeared from most of the Lower 48 in recent years, the brand long managed to persist in Alaska. Some have said expensive internet here is one reason why. The stores have also been a destination for some who visit just for the nostalgia.
https://www.hollywoodreporter....
It's a film that is so popular that the line for movie tickets busts out into neighboring city blocks from the block where the theater is located.
Also, it's a store that was revolutionary in 1995 for its use of video rental fees that were 30 years ahead of their time. I mean, seriously, I can rent a movie tonight for less than my family did at Blockbuster in the early '90s.
I don't get it. Why would you drive to a store when Amazon will deliver for free?
I don't understand the concept of "renting" movies. Information wants to be free.
It's pretty straightforward. You hook your VCR up to your buddy's VCR and copy the VHS tape you've rented from Blockbuster onto a blank tape. Free information.
Note that you may also need an RX2 Video Stabilizer.
https://i.ebayimg.com/images/i...
Correct. And it all wants to be free. Especially the atoms.
That sounds dirty.
A "Blockbuster" was sneakernet netflix, sonny
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Their site lists many more franchises still: http://www.blockbuster.com/fra...
Gotta wonder how much of the ratings are nostalgia:
https://www.google.com/maps/pl...
Do you have ESP?
That sounds dirty.
It often was. I mean, think about who your friends are, and how they keep their hovels.
But the store Blockbuster also sold (and rented; YMMV) special VHS and Betamax cassettes where instead of a magnetic data tape, they had an absorbent textile tape and a solvent reservoir; this could used to clean your tape heads.
The cleaning solvent is the same as used with magnetic server backup tape drives.
No. Just because it can be described does not mean it is a description. So things that exist are not automatically information, but the words you use to describe them are. All meta-data is information, but only data that intentionally instructs is information. Even interesting and instructive data only becomes information when you realize that it is interesting and respond by forming ideas about it in your mind; information is literally the something that forms the mind.
I stopped renting from them when they shifted their renting model from 1 night to 3nights or a week for more than I was willing to pay to rent a movie. I think it was $10 or something to get it for the week. I was willing to pay the 3-5 for the night but not $10.
Information wants to be free.
Really? Then please start with your banking information, medical history, and preferences in pornography.
Information doesn't want anything. It's inanimate. People might want certain information to be free, but there's some information that they'd only prefer see the light of day after the heat death of the universe renders such a thing impossible.
Like I said: I post on slashdot all day. I don't have a wife or girlfriend.
Doesn't bring 'em in the way it used to
Sure, Chase Bank: Acct#0543939849. Clean Medical History. Straight.
Nothing is wrong with Big Ted's. The best selection anywhere.
On a universal time scale, all information will be destroyed.
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
I'm surprised the Feds didn't shut that operation down years ago. Sounds disgusting.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
A cautionary tale in companies being bought for their credit rating.
It is a very large airdropped bomb.
I still don't get it. Can you rephrase it in the form of a car analogy?
Jokes aside, I do miss the rental stores. No UI comes close to the ability to browse through the rows of videos, maybe pick up a few snacks. Mine was right next to a Chinese place and a pizza place, so I used to go order, then wander through a pretty large selection of movies while I waited, with some random flick playing in the background on their TVs. It was a nice little space devoted to cinema. I liked it.
Yes, technology has made them somewhat obsolete when you can just rent & stream a lot of movies from Amazon, I get it, but still, I'm kind of sad to see them go. Although, mine was one of the smaller (by store numbers, not floorspace), regional ones, not Blockbuster, so maybe my experience was better than most.
I guess I can throw out my Blockbuster card now. I was saving it for my trip to Alaska.
If you're referring to the Big Rip, that's not currently believed likely. If you're referring to the black hole information paradox, there's probably not a lot of reason to believe that information can be destroyed. It's not really proven, but it's highly likely that information is a conserved property.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
Yeah information wants to be free, but the people who created it want to get paid for their time, which is why the copying of information can be artificially restricted by the people who created it. In the legal sense at least.
Some of these are still around, and possibly going strong, at least in places with a lot of students. They carry obscure movies and DVDs, and you can find weird people willing to argue about movies.
The Video Paradiso/Rhino Records combo is still doing fine in Claremont, CA, with its numerous colleges, and all the nice restaurants nearby. I know similar places in Cambridge, MA.
But the Blockbuster stores were all about efficiency and had no personality. So when someone with better efficiency and less personality came along, they died. The boutique stores remain... but will probably not survive those of us who remember them fondly at their heyday.
And frankly, they are an affectation. I have no real reason to rent a DVD no matter how obscure. I think I am just making myself feel virtuous instead of finding it on one of the Russian / Ukrainian / Bulgarian web sites. And I know someone who took Chinese in college so that he could pirate in more places.
No good deed goes unpunished...
With a Blockbuster sign in the background, you have to go to Oregon, or Brazil, or Australia...
*** Suerte a todos y Feliz dia!
If its a similar story to a recent one i heard about, they cant get product anymore. I am not sure why they couldnt get dvds, as i assume that they dont rent VHS anymore ( you can still buy dvds right?). Buy anyways sounds like the parent distributor is closing up shop.
Comox Valley's last video store to close, but not due to lack of demand
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Still cheaper than online renting.
It still makes sense. Not everywhere has reasonable and affordable broadband service, so if they want to watch a movie it's either a very expensive theater visit, or a physical rental. And the rental is generally at a reasonable price compared to an online streaming pay-per-view. You can also check out physical media at many libraries but they generall have a smaller supply.
Redbox does it without being staffed, but they have a small selection.
Information hates to be anthropomorphised.
A "Blockbuster" was sneakernet netflix, sonny
I wonder if there would be any value in something the size of say a chromecast dongle or similar that you push into a kiosk and store a few movies.
Basically you could get temporary copies of movies and not need to take them back. Charge say $100 for the device so its not a useful way to store movies forever, and of course there is no reasonable way to export them. When you finally do go back it deletes old movies. The device should just be hdmi and usb power maybe with smartphone app control.
Maybe for 4k?
Transfer (write) speed for an M2 module is around 700MB/s so this is feasible, assuming the security can be handled.
Which is why I should receive a payment for every advertisement served to me based on my location (my information) or my other preferences (again my information).
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
You really are a cunt.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
I’ll disagree. Even the most expensive iTunes rentals today are simply on par with what Blockbuster was charging decades ago.
Don't use itunes, but all the stuff I see for streaming is $5 and up, I've even seen $9.99 for just renting.
Nothing compares to that experience. Plus, I loved buying old DVDs after some new movie hit the shelves and they had to shed the 100 copies of it they had in stock. I got "scammed" by a redbox that wouldn't accept my movie back (then I got hit with late fees) so I won't touch those damned things.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
I still don't get it. Can you rephrase it in the form of a car analogy?
It's like renting a car.
You are being paid in kind. Try setting up a server which can serve 1080p videos at 9Mbit/s bitrate to anyone who wants to view the video (like YouTube does) and also has enough storage to store all your videos, and you will understand how much your information buys you. Similarly when you are viewing someone else's YouTube video, you are still enjoying a free streaming service. If you don't like the deal, walk away and don't use the online service.
There is a bidding war for your information, which means you are being compensated according to what the market thinks the information you provide is worth. People walked away from Hotmail and went to Gmail because Google paid more (aka provided more or better services) for the user's information, simple as that. Even this site you are browsing now (Slashdot) gives you a slice of their server bandwidth for free, in exchange for whatever information you provide to them.
Well, this site values my content enough that I am not subject to advertising.
Tho they probably sell my information.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Even the most expensive iTunes rentals today are simply on par with what Blockbuster was charging decades ago.
That may be true of urban wired Internet, not so much of satellite or cellular Internet where many plans still have data transfer overage fees on the order of 5 to 10 USD per gigabyte.
Why would you drive to a store when Amazon will deliver for free?
Latency, especially when a weekend is involved. It takes two business days for a Prime order to arrive or even longer for a nonsubscriber's Super Saver Shipping order to arrive. It also takes years for a movie to show up on flat-fee streaming services.
Information wants to be free.
Information doesn't want anything. It's inanimate. People might want certain information to be free, but there's some information that they'd only prefer see the light of day after the heat death of the universe renders such a thing impossible.
It's all related to the second law of thermodynamics. You can keep information from spreading, but that requires work.
Because they put a long message at the beginning of each video that would tell people that copying videos was illegal, it put an end to this practice. After they did it, no more videos were copied, and video watchers thanked them for letting them read the message at the beginning of each video. Everyone involved was happy and rejoiced.