The Complicated History of Renting Movies

GO TO YOUR LOCAL LIBRARY!!!! YOU CAN LOOK THRU SHELVES AS IF YOU WERE STILL AT FAMILY VIDEO!!!!!!!

An additional piece of movie rental history is that my parents owned an independent video store. They had it for several years. And then a blockbuster opened up across the street and killed their business. My parents threw an actual party when Blockbuster went out of business.

I spent three hours tonight watching random YouTube videos instead of watching a movie. That’s another huge cultural shift you didn’t talk about.

There was this sweet spot in the early 2010's, where almost everything was on Netflix and rental stores still existed but could tell they were on their last breaths so movies were really cheap to rent.

This is why people pirate. You don’t own your content unless it’s on your hard drive. If buying isn’t owning, piracy isn’t stealing!

Never been a more relevant video. Just tried to rent a movie on YouTube to show for an end-of-year party to my students. When I tried projecting it, YouTube automatically turned the screen white until I stopped sharing it. I paid for the movie and couldn’t even play it for the class.

That Netflix for Wii commercial gave me INTENSE whiplash, holy shit

that clip of the Disney vault commercial just unlocked a DEEP childhood memory of watching some Disney VHS and seeing that commercial on the video before the actual movie and begging my parents to buy whatever movie was sentenced to the vault because the concept of the vault hurt my little 8-year-old brain. So that’s neat that Disney did that to countless kids and parents!

save me burback brothers…

I can't wait for Amazon prime to air drop me rainsinets and a tube of goo whenever I rent a movie

we had a movie store by my house and we would go so often that we knew the owner, and he would give us the movie posters when they became outdated. we would go in and just say "I want....." and he would have a recommendation every time that was always so perfect. we ended up having like an account, and us kids would go in and he would let us rent movies without paying and when our parents went in they would just pay the tab. It was honestly the best part of my childhood. when movies went out of "style" I guess, he always told my dad first so we could buy them off him, and our movie collection got huge. honestly the freaking best. I really miss our video store.

I remember reading the novel "Less Than Zero" which is about rich teenagers in LA in the early 80s. They talk about getting Raiders of the Lost Ark on VHS like they just bought a new car. But I guess if VCRs were over $10,000 and a single tape cost $100 I can see why this was something only insanely wealthy kids had access to

Please talk about how the ads on YouTube have gotten much worse! They tripled the length of unskipable ads, going from a 5-10 second ad to 30 second unskipable ads almost every time. Plus the skipable ads are always over 90 seconds now, so I always have to have my remote nearby/charged, (I watch on PlayStation) so I can't just eat and watch or fall asleep to the vids because I have to skip an ad every few minutes. Compared to before where I could just wait out some of the 30 second skipable ads so that I could just leave my controller off. The worst part is they likely did not increase the ad revenue for creators even though viewers are seeing more and longer ads.

I remember that whole "Disney Vault" scam, every person I was friends with had all the movies on tape, there was never any sense of rarity or exclusivity. I've seen Aladdin so many times, I want to puke when I see parachute pants.

Oh lord the arguments in the rental stores that would break out because your parents were only renting ONE movie so everyone had to agree!

Why do I find the Burback Boys’ videos so soothing, it just feels like going into your favorite Professor’s class teaching you about something they love

I still appreciate that most movies come to theaters first before hitting streaming services, but that might be the last pillar left. Once theaters are gone, there's no more community to film enjoyment, and I fear that's where we're heading. Which is too bad because Movie Theater popcorn smacks.

god i miss life when you would see a wii / netflix ad on tv

as someone who works at a movie theatre, it's honestly depressing how big of a percentage of our customers are seniors. it worries me that soon enough, theatres aren't going to be profitable at all and will mostly close down

My wife and I periodically go to Goodwill and pick a movie out like its a rental night lol My mom managed a video store in a Kroger when i was little, and when i had to go in with her, she'd just park me in a corner and put on whatever i picked... Usually Kiki's Delivery Service or a Mary Kate and Ashley