Blockbuster Video’s brick-and-mortar locations collectively died today at age 23 after a long battle with ondemanditis; the final blow came with the announcement that its parent company plans to launch Blockbuster OnDemand — a subscription service that will allow users to download DVD-quality films from the Internet direct to their TV sets. Services will be held simultaneously in the Foreign Films, Horror, and New Releases aisles, where movie lovers in search of elusive Tara Reid direct-to-DVD flicks will wail and gnash their teeth. Burial should take place over the next decade, as folks who have yet to upgrade from VCR to DVD (or those other ridiculously expensive and certain-to-be-obsolete-in-five-years technologies) discover the unique joys of on-demand video through their cable providers and via services such as Apple, Amazon, Netflix, and Blockbuster OnDemand. Survivors include a host of local mom-and-pop video shops, John Travolta, and several hundred delicious popcorn-making machines.
R.I.P., Blockbuster video stores? (Well, sort of.)
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Comments (1-30) of 51 Add your comment
GOOD RIDDANCE! Employees of Blockbuster are universally awful.
I cant even remember the last movie i rented from any movie rental store…?
Until they get blu ray quality films im cool with going to blockbuster and renting the blu rays. Actually even after they get to that point i think ill still go to the store. part of the fun is spending forever picking arguing about what movies to get with other people while eating pop rocks
Hey, I used to work at Blockbuster, and while many of my co-workers WERE awful, there were a couple of qulaity people who really knew movies, and our manager was terrific. I’d have to say that the customers are the ones who are universally awful- especially the teenagers.
I also worked at a Blockbuster in college. I can barely stand to go in them now. I tried to rent a movie recently and out of a list of 15 movies they had 0. Not even 12 Angry Men!! I gave up and went home to watch Netflix on demand.
This article’s a bit misleading…I was, at first, thinking that Blockbuster was closing all of its physical stores. As a Blockbuster.com customer who loves taking them in and exchanging them for in-store rentals, that would have been terrible (waiting 2 days for movies!). But this is just an added thing…one that, I think, will take forever to catch on. I think most people don’t like the thought of storing a movie on their hard drive. People like, for some reason, physically having it in their hand. It’s weird, but I think it’s true.
Well, well. Apparently Blockbuster stores are as dead as the music industry and newspapers. Hmmmmm, could entertainment magazines be next????
I admit I don’t go to Blockbuster that often anymore. Yet, I have encountered some pretty good employees there.
Noooooo!!! This news comes as a huge disappointment to me. It is much more convenient to hop over to my neighborhood store then to wait two days in the mail for Netflix. I don’t always know what type of movies i want, and part of the fun of renting is scanning the shelves-just like going to the bookstore. Why does everything have to be run via internet?!? Plus, my cable provider’s on demand selection is HORRIBLE and very low-quality.
I rarely go to Blockbuster as I can rent recent movies a whole lot cheaper from area convenience stores – $2.00 – $2.50 cheaper. And I’ve found newer videos there than at Blockbuster too.
great, another thing from my childhood and teenage years that’s dead. it was always such a treat to go to blockbuster, scan for movies, take them home and have pizza and snacks. doing it over the internet just isn’t the same… and like the person below me said, can be less convenient and spur of the moment.
Yeah!!! What great news! I left Blockbuster for Netflix as soon as Netflix started. Getting a late charge when I didn’t return a movie late, then being told that the manager of Blockbuster “had her eye on me” when I was a model customer, was the last straw. I told the Blockbuster employee that Netflix would put them out of business, and I was right!! So happy to be dancing on their grave!!!!
Good riddance! I’d much rather stick with my Netflix. You do the math: for 8 movies it’s $9.00 a month from Netflix…or $38.00 (because they’re what, $4.75 each now?)from Blockbuster!! Hmm, I’d rather wait that extra day.
I am an avid movie fan and I love Netflix because of their amazing selection of movies. It used to be frustrating to go to the video store to find good foreign language films, now I can conveniently get them through the awesomeness that is Netflix. And there are still great mom and pop chains that I can go to when I am in the mood to browse and converse with awesome movie enthusiasts that work there.
I don’t see this happening in the near decade. We all know that the video rental market is still strong. As long as the majority of people (aka Walmart-type shoppers) don’t have high speed internet, then high speed downloading will not be the leading method of video rental. It’s economics. If the average person goes to movie theaters or goes to the video store, then those venues/shops will still rule. Blockbuster has the money to test out various markets without giving up on another.
I’ve been with Netflix since 2005. Yet I still rent movies from the local video store. It’s much more fullfilling to browse the aisles with a friend to find that right movie. And I can’t see myself giving up on the physical DVDs. Like chris said, people (like me) have to have that physical disk in hand. And renting movies is the same way.
Plenty of people who shop at Walmart have high speed internet. Most of us also have indoor plumbing.
dropped netflix after having the same movies at home for 4 months. now just either buy the dvd or go to the local library. hard to beat free…..
I love going to my brick & mortar Blockbuster. Well, I did until they closed due to a pricey lease. Still, I go to the other 2 ones. It’s a great place to buy previously viewed DVD’s. There is something I enjoy about going to a store, looking at merchandise, interacting with people… Online movies may be the way of the future, but as long as the brick & mortar stores are there, I plan to go to them.
It sucks really. How many of you have picked out some movie that you never heard of prior to entering the store? It’s bad news I think for indie movies and other smaller films. On demand will do to movies as mp3 downloads did to music albums. People will miss out on a lot of stuff. Browsing the aisles is like listening to a whole album containing songs maybe you never would have heard otherwise. Oh well…
I didn’t like the Netflix thing, my problem is that I end up putting off watching the movies, and they sit around the house for a month, then I send them back unwatched. I canceled, and just went to Blockbuster when I really wanted to watch a movie. But last year, another chain, called Family Video, opened up here, and they’re a lot cheaper, so I started going there. They actually put the Blockbuster down the street out of business. That’s all Blockbuster needs, is competition, nearly 5 bucks for a new release is ridiculous.
This isn’t the death of a brick and mortar store! This is Blockbuster branching out to people who prefer to watch their movies through a different medium. There are people who want to get their movies through the mail, people who would rather order them over the tv and watch on demand, and there ARE people that still prefer to actually go to the store.
Good riddance. Blockbuster is worthless, takes up space, wastes valuable resources, is terribly unsanitary (think theater houses of the 17th century), and outdated.
Having once worked at a Blockbuster, I was a bit sad to hear this news but it was inevitable, they just didn’t seem eager to flex with the times. Still, the end of an era as they had provided lots of entertainment and hard to forget their impact in those pre-Internet/DVD days.
Great, even EW proclaiming death to DVD…
Newsflash, they still sell…that why Itunes hasn’t proclaim itself as a number one in videos.
I rented 2 movies from Blockbuster in the last week. When I decide I want to rent a movie I don’t want to have to wait for 2 days to get it. The instant gratification of being able to go to the video store and pick out what I want without having to wait is what keeps the stores open. Also as long as they continue to rent video games and sell cheap previously viewed movies, I don’t see them totally going out of business. They might close some stores but I doubt if they’d ever close them all.
I’m on the nostalgia bus with “jen”. Those 7:52 PM trips to the Blockbuster in the strip mall … going inside anyway … wandering the skewed aisles under the bluish glare of the fluorescent lights … the cut-outs both menacing and sad … the piles of “movie-style” candy and popcorn next to the check out counter … chatting with your friends whose afterschool job it was to collect the late videos … and then forgetting to return the video you came to return. Ah, the late 90s. Another century, another lifetime, another age of this world.
Are you all insane?? I would love to be able to never physically have to touch a DVD ever again!! Just hit a button and it instantly plays on my TV!! That is the life! I already am 100% using Netflix…I DESPISE movie stores!! Where do you people live that you decide you want to watch a movie friday night and are able to go to the store and get ANYTHING?? Cause here in PA…you would be S.O.L!!!! And then you end up renting something you dont want and get treated like poo by some 15 year old that hates his job…..and drop like 6 bucks for a movie due back tomorrow by NOON! Ridiculousness!!
I use the Blockbuster online program, so I can get a DVD in the mail, and then trade it in at the store for another. Its especially good for watching TV series, because you can trade in one mailed DVD for an entire season of a TV show in-store.
Some movies I want to watch the day they are released. Hince the trip to the movie gallery. 4 bucks 5 days.