What happened to the video stores?
A few weeks ago, the last remaining video store (with the exception of Blockbuster) closed in our community. It was Movie Gallery in Westfield. I understand people are watching more movies than ever. Considering we’re in the middle of the “personal entertainment revolution,” where are people getting all their movies? Are they downloading all of them from the internet? watching on pay per view? getting them in the mail through netflix? I can tell you they’re not renting at the video store because there aren’t many of those left.
It wasn’t so long ago that you could find a video store in just about any shopping center. And, many grocery stores used them to attract customers who nearly always bought something else. Well, our local Kroger never had one that I can remember and Marsh closed theirs about a year ago.
As a parent of young kids I really enjoyed visiting the video stores on winter days, giving the kids a chance to get out of the house when cabin fever started taking hold. Kroger has a machine but only one person can browse at a time and its not like browsing through a store. I’m not sure how the economics of renting movies have changed but they obviously have as you just can’t find a good movie store around any more.
January 10th, 2008 at 5:39 pm
Well, around 5 years ago, services like Netflix and Blockbuster online started to become very popular and now have millions of subscribers. Then the Ipod Video came around and people could download movies and TV and watch them on the go or use an Ipod dock to watch them on their big screen TVs (which is what I do). We also saw the birth of Windows Media PCs and entertainment devices like the Xbox 360, which can stream movies from your computer to your television, eliminating the need for DVDs. Downloading content is the future, whether it’s on-demand cable television, download sites like Itunes, or illegal file sharing.